SABINE BANOVIC
TEXTS (SELECTION)
Exhibition "Modular Totem"
Jarmuschek + Partner | December 17, 2016–February 11, 2017
Under the title ‘Modular Totem’ Jarmuschek+Partner gallery presents a solo exhibition by Sabine Banovic in its new space. The black and white drawings by the Berlin-based artist constantly balance on the fine line between what is consciously undefined and associative representational. Dark, organically spreading colour gradients and precisely drawn lines are juxtaposed. Out of these strong contrasts powerful dynamics arise. Beyond any certainty about the meaning of what has been seen, the viewer finds oneself put directly in a state of contemplating, associating, and deciphering.
With her new works, Sabine Banovic once again expands her artistic spectrum. Aside from klecksography and graphic elements on paper and canvas, geometrical folds, printing and chemical processes determine the complexion of her images. The improvisational approach to the accidental and the graphical controlling of what is being created are the keys to a poetic pictorial formation, that, as a part of a constant creative stream, then again results into another. Action and reaction constantly alternate in the process of developing the image, requiring from the artist her relaxed sovereignty as well as her courage to experiment. In the moment of drawing her hand is able to let the process of thinking become visible.
Like two facing poles, the largest works in the exhibition embody those antagonisms that coexist in mutual tension in almost all of Sabine Banovic’s drawings: Five paintings, resembling Rorschach cards stacked vertically one above the other, build a "modular totem“ like the shadow of a sculpturally ornamented post. Despite the deterministic notion of a totem, these elements are versatile in structure as well as in their psychological interpretation. The symmetrical ink stains seem as if they connect to a secret plan, to a hidden layer of meaning that is calling the viewer to be discovered individually. The mental reflections of those images are prompting questions about one’s own personality, and offer possibilities of exploring individuality and identity in general.
Tightly connected to the idea of the viewer’s mental engagement with the artwork, "Virgin Territory“ is a vast net of elastic strings and drop-shaped weights, forming an abstract perspective framework of an imagined space. Stunningly few and simple instruments are used for this radically reduced installation that embraces the wall and the viewer. Under the given gravitational forces, the piece establishes a fine balance between tension and tranquillity, heaviness and lightness to the extreme.
For a long time, the viewer can explore Sabine Banovic's works and find new associations, thoughts, and projections that are mutually dependent, excluding or simply coexisting. Often, the images reach far beyond material, frames and borders, can be endlessly continued and thought further. Shifting between chaos and order, impermanence and constancy, they may be a landscape, a body, a movement or a sound image to the seeking beholder — and sometimes all of this at the same time.
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Exhibition "Treibsand"
Jarmuschek + Partner | September 14–December 21, 2013
“I draw the thing which makes a musician contort his face while playing music.[...] the emotional content of the line, the relationships which are developed and then dissolved in the interplay between these impressions; all of this reflects a form of contemplation [...]”
Sabine Banovic, based in Berlin, attended the master classes of Leiko Ikemura. Her work is reminiscent of the brush painting of the Far East in which lines and the sequence of brush strokes are crucial in the development of the visual space. The filigree lines, tracery, nodules and spots which form and at the same time dissolve the bodies and landscapes in Banovic’s work take us, as we become immersed in her large scale drawings, into mystical parallel worlds and forms of thought.
The dimensions dance between proximity and distance. Established associations and the emotions that go with them become mingled, are developed further and leave the viewer searching for visual reference points. It is especially the absence of defined contours and the alternating contrasts between black and white that serve to dissolve the flat structures and spaces in her pictures so they always promote a mood of contemplation in the observer. There is a conscious alternation between emptiness and richness in the portrayal of the opposites of abstraction and the clearly recognizable. The eye remains fixed on the individual islands of meaning as visual anchors, is submerged into numerous microcosms and finally becomes lost in the diffuse mist of the lines. In her works, Sabine Banovic creates a refreshing drive that seems to pull or even suck you into the image. She achieves this effect by limiting her material language to hatchings, lines and apparently random traces of ink that alltogether coalesce to an imaginary landscape.