The Leonhardi-Museum presents a selection of drawings on paper and canvas as well as processed lithographs by the Dresden artist Jana Morgenstern from 2007 to 2012. The central and recurring art-theoretical theme is the contour, which for Jana Morgenstern represents a conscious formal simplification. This return to the line opens up a wide range of creative possibilities for the artist, which she explores on changing supports and with different techniques in a serial approach. In this way, delicate, filigree networks of lines are grouped together to form new shapes or amorphous bands that cover the picture surface right up to the edge.
‘The issues under discussion here are those of figuration and abstraction. The contour serves as a conceptual link between these two poles. Yet in the interplay between them, a different way of engaging with landscape emerges – as an inexhaustible source of formal potential from which a new vocabulary arises.’
Quotes: AGNES MATTHIAS ‘Konturen’
(catalogue accompanying the exhibition at the Leonhardi Museum, 2013)
Agnes Matthias spoke at the opening on Friday, 18 January 2013.
