Jorinde Voigt

König London presents a solo exhibition by Jorinde Voigt with works from four series of new collages created in the artist's Berlin studio since autumn 2021. All works in On Reality are mounted behind glass in black wooden boxes mirrored from the inside. Over the past two decades, Voigt has continuously developed the medium of drawing that she predominantly uses, incorporating both painterly and sculptural means into her work. In these new works made of coloured paper, Voigt expands her visual vocabulary of drawing, writing or numbering by combining it with techniques such as cutting out different shapes of colour and layering them, or by using mirror glass to incorporate space and viewer into the images. By developing her conceptual works on paper into the third dimension, the artist finds a new expression for her longstanding investigation of reality and perception.

Jorinde Voigt's work is primarily informed by her preoccupation with specific philosophical models, artistic or scientific topics, which she visualises in a formal language that is as reduced as possible. Voigt makes inner visions tangible by transferring her intellectual investigations into action and material. Lines are formulated as cuts with a scalpel. The multi-layered nature of the collages presents an operation on reality as a membrane. Voigt slits and splits, opens layer by layer, to then reconnect them and create simultaneity. In the works on display, this quality of the cut contour meets curved lines in oil pastels, ink or graphite, which mark the timeline of an action or positions in space in varying intensities.

The Studie zur Wirklichkeit series (EN: Study on Reality, 2021) is based on various approaches to questioning reality with regard to the perception of movement in space and temporal sequences in process philosophy. In her works, Voigt structures these concepts into different, transversally interconnected levels on which movement and events are visualised by means of directions and other markings. She extracts central terms such as ‘potential’, ‘position’ or time markers such as ‘Today’, ‘Again’, ‘Loop’, or ‘2 Sec’, noting mood indications in the form of emojis.

Voigt frequently relates her notations to the realm of music. In Particella (2021), the artist creates a composition of repetitive forms of layered cardboard on which she annotates temporal and choreographic concepts.

Another aspect of Voigt's exploration of chronological processes and their mapping are natural rhythms that structure experience, such as the seasons, the day-night rhythm, pulse or respiration. In her series of works Atem Studie (EN: Breathing Study, 2021), repeating elements and curved arrows of different directions and lengths indicate a rhythm or an up and downward movement.

In The Sum of All Best Practices (2022), Voigt uses the shapes of leaves she has collected from trees in her surroundings, traced in graphite onto black cardboard and thus documented. She piles up the cut-out leaves over a mirrored background, offering new perspectives and making space and the viewer an integral part of the work. Light and shadow, as well as the absorbent quality of the black cardboard, also change the appearance of the leaves depending on the angle of vision. Thus, light becomes an essential and immaterial component of this work. In its uniqueness, each leaf is a result of thousands of years of evolution of the botanical world, hence containing all the characteristics that have proven themselves as a survival strategy over this period of time. ‘Every present form tells of its own past’, Voigt states, discovering in this work yet another way of representing temporality.

Jorinde Voigt not only constantly opens up new fields of action in the medium of drawing, but also reveals new perspectives on the subjects she deals with from music, philosophy, nature or science.

Parallel to the London exhibition, Voigt's 18-part series Intensität, Atmosphären und Musik (EN: Intensity, Atmosphere and Music, 2021) can be seen at St. Agnes in Berlin. Here, the artist visually explores the essay of the same title by Hermann Schmitz, the German founder of New Phenomenology.

Studio Jorinde Voigt is dedicating a publication to the recent On Reality collages, which will be published during the run of the exhibition. Some examples are also part of the current group exhibition at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston, Texas (until 14 May 2022).

The artist's solo exhibitions have included shows at Bozar, Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2020); Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, TX (2019); Horst Janssen-Museum, Oldenburg (2019); St. Matthäus-Kirche, Berlin (2018); Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2017); Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2016); Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2015); Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2014); and the Langen Foundation, Neuss (2013). Furthermore, she has participated in several biennials, such as Manifesta 11, Zurich (2016); Sharjah Biennial (2017); Biennale de Lyon (2017); and the Vienna Biennial for Change (2019).

In 2012, Voigt was awarded the 5th Drawing Prize of the Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation. The artist's work is represented in institutional collections worldwide, including those of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich and the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.