Honey-nougat-bred

In the glass house, ten large squares made from wood and canvas are put on display. On them is nothing but color. In her exhibition ‘the honey-nougat-bred’ the artist, Anna-Katharina Rintelen, does not show things that could be recognized. But whoever thinks that she is an abstract painter may do so erroneously.  Her paintings are not an interplay of areas, shapes and colors that self-suffices. Anna-Katharina Rintelen paints according to nature and her paintings remind of Monet’s water lilies or the landscapes of William Turner. The Swiss (Basel) artist who now lives in Germany (Freiburg) leaves the viewer in the uncertain.  She is not so much interested in the concrete, sharp reproduction but rather loves the unfocussed, the movement, the music, the melange, the superimposition and the interspace. Her paintings are crafted with plenty of white areas on which the colors gather and indulge in a breathless interplay. It is as if you would lay in a wheat field with blue cornflowers and red poppy.
The sun directly shines into your face, you blink and a strong wind blows. That’s when you are right in the middle of one of Anna-Katharina Rintelen’s paintings. Tangled-up in lively shapes and colors infatuating your senses. The less you know where you are and what you see, the more vivid the colors, the sounds and the smells you experience.

And all of Anna-Katharina Rintelen’s Paintings are of this quality. There, a blue flush of water swooshes through the canvas, there leaves rustle in front of a golden yellow sun, there sweeps a sea of blossoms through the sky, there glowing grass mirrors itself in the back light of the bright water, there a field dissolves in front of the setting sun. Who ever wants, does not see any of this but feels the freshness, enjoys the subtle movement, relishes the wildness, indulges in the blaze of colors and allows the senses to be pleasantly confused.

Apart from these large size paintings, the artist also exhibits india-ink drawings on paper. Here, the movement of the brush comes to the foreground, which, without getting concrete, reflects the wildness of plants or the structure of insect swarms. These drawings are like a score, a musical composition, a written instruction to a deepened seeing and hearing. The piece that is played here in turn is the infinite wealth of forms offered by nature. L’art pour l’art, art just for the sake of art is foreign to Anna-Katharina Rintelen.

She integrates the viewer into a lively cosmos that exists outside the viewer. The contact with this world is cheerful and directly aims for the senses. „Stop thinking!“, that’s what all of her paintings/drawings say and encourage you to surrender yourself to the beauty of this world.

(Martin Ganzkow, about the exhibition “Honey-nougat-bread” at the Glashaus Derneburg 2012)