Martina Chardin
Paintings | Photography | Mixed Media
Germany
About the artist
I photograph what I cannot paint and paint what I cannot photograph
As a painter and photographer, Martina Chardin shows painting and photography in their purest form, but often also in combination, using a variety of digital possibilities.
Her paintings are largely informal, often her abstract works also have landscape references. Chance, composition, transparency and a story play a central role in her works.
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The artist combines painting and photography in her art, moving on an interface between abstraction and concretisation. At these interfaces, empty spaces are created in a figurative sense, which the viewer immediately fills with his or her own interpretations, feelings and moods. Characteristic of her art is a light-filled transparency that often makes the works seem almost surreal.
Particularly appealing, for example, is the series of beach pictures in which she uses banal holiday photos as the basis for her artistic research. With acrylic and sand, the prints are painted over and on. Individual scenes become condensed, motifs become isolated. By concentrating on the essentials, certain gestures become striking and become metaphors for something beyond what is shown. Airy atmospheric images emerge that show an endless distance of bright light and seem to be lifted out of time and space.
This indeterminate distance can also be found in her abstract landscapes. In these works, Martina Chardin detaches herself even more from the representational, so that only vague mimetic allusions can be found. The painting process seems to be in the foreground, in which the artist's productive, pictorial power expresses itself. Seen in this light, a self-reflexive moment can certainly be found in the abstract landscapes.
Reflection in turn connects the landscapes with the photographic portraits over which the artist superimposes abstract paintings.
Those portrayed en face enter into an immediate dialogue with the viewer and questions immediately arise, as in the beach paintings. The traces of painting become significant. What do they show and what do they hide? Are they layers, skinnings, showing different aspects of the soul? With these works, Martina Chardin makes the multidimensionality of human beings visible and at the same time points to the richness and potential of the imagination that is inherent in human beings as creative beings.
In her art, Martina Chardin seeks to fathom the essential, to trace the phenomenon of being. The unbound play with opposites such as the abstract and the figurative, the designated and the unclear, the concealing and the uncovering, painting that is free and formless and closed form, make up the special character of her works. The light-flooded transparency of the works invites aesthetic experiences in which the viewer can mirror himself. Leaving room for this testifies to the artist's great sensitivity, attentiveness and precise powers of observation.
Dr. Stefanie Lucci
Vita
Born in Jülich in 1961.
1978-1980 FOS for design in Aachen; student of the painter Herb Schiffer from Düren.
1980-1982 training as a photo lab assistant.
1985-1987 training as a photographer in Düsseldorf.
since 1987 freelance painter and photographer.
1997-2001 student of Wolfgang Horn (member of the Düsseldorf Malkasten)
2002 studio, Haan, since 2012 studio, Mett
Works | Series
Painting
swimming Pool
Digital Kunst- summer swimming _ i say no
Remembering the Future _ Everything in the River
Transience
Other. No series
References
Awards
2022 MEopenArt- 3rd jury prize- Mettmann, Germany
2021 Ministry and NRW-Stiftung Naturschutz, Heimat- und Kulturpflege- 4th jury prize, photo calendar "Unsere Heimat 2020-2021"- Düsseldorf, Germany
2018 MEopenArt- 2nd jury prize- Mettmann, Germany
2018
3rd place, audience award, MEopenArt 2018, panta rhei
2017
1st place, jury prize at MEopenArt 2017, Tour de France
2011
1st place, Filmstiftung NRW 2011
2010
Filmstiftung NRW- 1st Jury Prize- Düsseldorf, Germany
Solo exhibitions
2018 Neanderland crime scenes / Atelier Chardin - Mettmann, Germany
2009 Cross-section / RWE Power Schloss Paffendorf - Bergheim, Germany
2001 Cross-section / Sparkasse Velbert - Velbert, Germany
2000 Impressions / Jülich Town Hall - Jülich, Germany
Group exhibitions
2022 10 in 77 / Werft 77, Reisholzer Werftstraße 77 - Düsseldorf, Germany
2022 MeopenArt 2022 / Kunsthaus Mettmann - Mettmann, Germany
2021 Current Works of Art / Kunst im H6 - Hilden, Germany
2020 MEopenArt "Departures" / Kunsthaus Mettmann - Mettmann, Germany
2019 MEopenart / Kunsthaus Mettmann - Mettmann, Germany
2018 MEopenart "panta rhei" / Kunsthaus - Mettmann, Germany
2018 Sacred buildings / Galerie Wehten - Mettmann, Germany
2013 Zwischenwelten / Kulturform Alte Pumpstation - Haan, Germany
2007 Haan Creativ / 2007 Chapelle du Collège - Eu, France
2002 Show me an angel / Wilhelm Fabry Museum - Hilden, Germany
Press
2019 rponline- Six creatives design their own space at the Kunsthaus
2019 Mettmann shop window- art exhibition "ARTikuliert" begins on 22 November
2017 rp online- Creatives depict the Tour de France