LINE OF THOUGHT
The paintings of Gerlind Zeilner are the result of both attentive observation and a vivid imagination. The artist collects impressions from what she calls the theatre of life, as she observes it in bars, on the streets in the city in Vienna or outside in the mountains. In small drawings she makes quick sketches of scenes. Then in the studio, the life extract from these drawings connects itself to her vision of objects around her, like a window ledge, a chair or a mop in a basket. Things start to change shape, as the artist looks at them, and this transformation is taken further and intensified in her paintings.
The colorful lines in Zeilner’s painting are not only there to indicate the shape of an object, a person or building – they also act by themselves to transmit a variety of expressions, ranging from fragility and hesitation to firmness and wonder. As a whole the paintings embody a sensibility and a way of looking, more then a specific scene. The title of the works – always consisting of one word – refer to the source of each painting. They don’t explain the work, but can be considered as one fragment of a larger whole.
In the exhibition Line of Thought the artist presents a new body of works, showing a tendency to lightness and abstraction. The colorful density of some earlier works, such as Bar (2014), has made place for transparency and the conscious use of empty, white spaces, such as in Stau and in Sims (both 2018). In the exhibition nine paintings are accompanied by a selection of small scale drawings.
Gerlind Zeilner was born in Mödling, Austria in 1971 and currently lives in Vienna, where she is teaching drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts. She was the recipient of the Georg Eisler award (2006) and the Anton Faistauer award (2008). Her work has been shown in dozens of exhibitions in Austria as well as in Italy, Israel, Syria and Albania. Line of Thought is her first solo presentation in Greece.
This exhibition took place in Thessaloniki at Donopoulos IFA
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