12 February 2006

Sabine Moriz at Andrew Mummery


Sabine Moritz
15 February – 18 March 2006

Private view: Tuesday 14 February 2006. 6-8pm

Gallery open Wednesday-Saturday, 12-6pm, and by appointment


The Andrew Mummery Gallery is pleased to announce the first exhibition in London of the work of the painter Sabine Moritz. In Moritz’s most recent work, two subjects predominate. One is war - images of battlefields, soldiers and military vehicles that have been taken from photographs in newspapers and magazines. The other is still-life - orchids, roses and lilies in vases, painted in the artist’s studio. Sometimes the two subjects are combined.

The theme of Moritz’s paintings, the horror and ever-presence of war and the transience of beauty, would seem to be fairly clear, but a more careful consideration of them reveals that something more subtle is also going on and that the symbolism is more personal. The helicopters that appear in many of these paintings, particularly when they are depicted alongside flowers, at first seem threatening harbingers of war, but they can also symbolise rescue and escape. Battle itself is never directly depicted; only it’s aftermath, or that waiting time before conflict. One of the paintings is revealing entitled Limbo, a hint that Moritz is seeking to bring a kind of balance, through the process of painting, to the tensions and contradictions of her subject matter.

Sabine Moritz was born in Quedlinburg, Germany in 1969. She now lives and works in Cologne.

An illustrated catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition.

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