Silke Eva Kästner

anarchic contemplations

’I put together materials, traces of actions that hold an impulse for me’ , Silke Eva Kästner

Karl Oskar Gallery presents a solo exhibition by German artist Silke Eva Kästner, whose work may be described as painting let loose into the world, unfettered and autonomous — and truly alive. Born beyond the confines of a two-dimensional plane, it is transformed by the environment, passersby, the wind, dancers, and marks made by her own hand. If there was a question at the root of her artistic practice for the last fifteen years, it would be: what is painting capable of when it is entirely and radically free?

Originally from the Black Forest in Germany, Silke Eva Kästner studied Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Berlin, Academy of the Arts in Karlsruhe, and the Glasgow School of Art. She was also a student of Katharina Grosse at the Kunsthochschule Weissensee. She currently lives and works in Berlin. Her many residencies in India, Japan, the UK and the USA are an important influence on her work. In her first solo exhibition at Karl Oskar Gallery, Silke Eva Kästner will show work ranging from painting, collage, performance, installation and video.

Along with various classical materials associated with painting such as acrylic paint, oil paint, egg tempera, spray paint and pigment, Silke Eva Kästner uses her own self-produced colours made from natural materials such as elderflower, berries or bricks. Her materials are sourced from everyday, available objects such as fabrics, cardboard and newspapers.

At first sight, elements of Kästner’s work are reminiscent of the gestural abstraction associated with the Action School of painting. The spontaneous flowing and dribbling of paint and physicality of the act of painting seem to clearly stem from this tradition. Unlike the Action Painters however, who were led primarily by intuition, Kästner spends a long time meditating about her mark-making, and a significant amount of preparatory thought goes into the colours chosen for her work. Where the abstract expressionists were interested in expressing emotion on canvas, her work is very contemplative and meditative. For both however, the performative of painting is important to the finished work.

Silke Eva Kästner, Untitled, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 140 x 100 cm,

A series of collages presented seemingly conventionally on framed paper provide an insight into the complex process behind the artist’s practice. For Silke Eva Kästner, collage is a way to reinterpret her own history by newly contextualising the materials she finds and those that are given to her. In this way her work is always fluid and ongoing. The paper collages have their origin in previous installations which included large colour planes arranged by the artist as three dimensional collages in space: After this initial stage of Kästner arranging her colour planes, the audience was invited to rearrange them, and in doing so, left their own mark on her creation. Altered by the participation of the public, the installations were photographed. It is these photographs that formed the raw source material that Kästner bases her paper collages on.

The principle of collage is also central to her performative work Color Field — an eight-minute long film, accompanied by reflections on her process. Here, two figures move under a cloth structure on a wide green meadow. The cloth is sewn together, made of heavily coloured garments, painted sheets and canvas. The image is a collage transformed by movement, where material and body fragments become hybrid architecture.

‘Die Collagen sind eine Form des wilden Denkens, indem sie (Silke Eva Kästner) immer wieder abrupte und unvorgesehene Kombinationen erproben, indem sie Reste und Überlebsel aus anderen Arbeiten in neue Bildformen überführen’ — Dorothée Bauerle-Willert, 2020

‘The collages are a form of wild thinking, in that they in experiment with abrupt and unforeseen combinations, where the remains and survivors of other work lead to new images.’ — Dorothée Bauerle-Willert 2020

Silke Eva Kästner, Quite Times, 2020, Sewn silk, canvas and found materials, Natural Dyes, 3,75m x 10m x6m, Photo Christina Sandrock

To be a painter today, in a world saturated with images, is to face relentless questions about the continued significance of painting for the human experience. Does painting still have power? Silke Eva Kästner has found one way to answer this question with a resounding yes, through a spirit of experimentation and radical, borderless thinking, which proves how much painting is capable of.

Amrita Dhillon

Silke Eva Kästner, Quite Times, 2020, Sewn silk, canvas and found materials, Natural Dyes, 3,75m x 10m x6m, Photo Ron Helbig