Anna Von Mertens "Portraits"

Sara Meltzer Gallery

poster for Anna Von Mertens "Portraits"

This event has ended.

For the past several years Anna Von Mertens has combined the traditional act of quilt making with numerous methods of recording time and space: tracking the movement of the stars, cartography, memorializing both public and personal events and documenting geographic locations. As seen in her last body of work depicting significant historical moments of dusk and dawn, her process of hand-dyeing and hand-stitching cotton fabric straddles a line between painting and craft; it embraces tradition while simultaneously pushing the notion of painting.

In her new body of work, the artist plays off Walter Benjamin's notion of the aura of a work of art by interpreting auras for iconic portraits from art history. These aura portraits are the artist's attempt to capture the ideas, thoughts and perceptions imposed upon a work of art. Shifting focus from the artwork itself to the anecdotes about the work, these aura portraits acknowledge the myths built around each original work of art. To interpret the aura of a work of art, Von Mertens researched the personalities of both artist and subject, the relationship between the two and the historical context of the painting. Hand painting dye onto fabric, the artist creates an aura in the same proportions as the original painting and then superimposes hand stitching to indicate the subject's chakra pattern. The result is a narrative of the subject's life through enigmatic fields of color, furthering Von Merten's exploration of abstract painting. Her creation of interpretive auras reveals a search for beauty within questions of belief and representation.

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Schedule

from December 11, 2009 to January 16, 2010

Opening Reception on 2009-12-11 from 18:00 to 20:00

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