Solweig de Barry: Zwischen Dicht und Dünn

To the sun to the light

One of the distinctive qualities of Solweig de Barry's painting (*1987 in Strasbourg, lives and works in Berlin) is the balance between suggestion and formulation, conceptual distance and intuition, between representation and ­abstraction. The exhibition at the Kunstverein Heilbronn is the first extensive presentation of her work in an institution to date and includes works on canvas and a glass painting on the large window front of the Kunstverein. There are impressive examples over the centuries, such as the cathedrals of Chartres or Amiens, the Notre Dame du Ronchamp chapel by Le Corbusier or the stained glass windows by contemporary artists such as Gerhard Richter in Tholey or, more recently, Olafur Eliasson in Greifswald, to name but a few. What they all have in common, however, is that color and glass are firmly connected through the technical process of production. Solweig de Barry sought to find a way to realize this painting on glass panes in situ with paint that has the same trans­lucent quality as classic glass art, because most commercially available paints applied to glass panes actually cast a grey or black shadow on the floor. The process for glass painting that she has now developed by experimenting with paints and varnishes opens up the possibility of extend­ing two-dimensional painting into the space, work­ing with reflections and repetitions, while inte­grating the movement of the sun and the light.

Exhibition:
Kunstverein Heilbronn, 18/5 - 8/9/2024