Anne Neukamp’s painting is structured around different planes that reveal both a play of motifs and a unique pictorial process. So the temptation arises to conduct a cross-sectional analysis like a geologist, to record the successive strata, or reveal the artist’s various approaches and influences.

In the decryption game, the rendering of the foreground motif evokes the engraving technique, while the second level approaches hyperrealism, and the third seems to borrow the characteristics of a fresco. Through this know-how and these references, the artist situates her pictorial story within the history of art, while creating her own history: none of the planes is secondary, a mere pretext for highlighting others. Here, there is no background in the service a figurative motif. On the contrary, every part of the composition plays an essential, fully-fledged role.

And yet the motif raises questions. Appropriating logos, objects and letters, it establishes a grammar from sources that are difficult to pinpoint.

In this play of motifs, forms and techniques, the subtlety and singularity of Anne Neukamp’s work can be perceived: a plane-by-plane rendering that models the beginnings of a 3D image. It is work that well and truly belongs to its time, with that reference to the codes and signs of web culture, a convoluted subject, “painting 2.0”, as Colby Chamberlain defined it in Artforum when writing about Anne Neukamp’s work. In his time, Magritte did the same. As a witness and messenger of a world newly ruled by objects, the surrealist artist revealed the advertising world to the collective consciousness of the 20th century. Anne Neukamp acknowledges Magritte’s influence. Some of the paintings presented in this exhibition, or in the previous ones, testify to this inspiration. But this reference can only be taken so far. The “abstraction through hybridisation” in these compositions is endlessly surprising.

Anne Neukamp’s pictorial language is situated outside the realm of the purely contemplative. Based on this motif, the artist begins a process of transformation that leads her towards a process of abstraction. In fact, through these works, Anne Neukapmp invites the viewer to explore and question the meaning of the symbols of our time.

Anne Neukampv (born in 1975 at Düsseldorf), lives and works in Berlin. She is graduated from the University of Fine Arts Dresden and from the Academy of Fine Arts, Düsseldorf.

Neukamp currently shows her new personal exhibition «Gamberge» at galerie Valentin in Paris (FR). She is preparing an important exhibition at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery from the University of the Arts of Philadelphia (US) for summer 2018.

Her recents solo and group exhibitions include: Marlborough Contemporary, New York (US); Greta Meert, Brussels (BE); Lisa Cooley, New York (US); Jr Projects, Toronto (CA); Gregor Podnar, Berlin; Kunstverein Oldenburg (DE); Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen (DE); KunstWerke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (DE); Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (US); Galerie des Galeries, Galerie Lafayettes, Paris (FR)... She was invited by the Professor Claudine Tiercelin to the seminar «La Fabrique de la Peinture» for the flesh of the Metaphysics and the Philosophy of knowledge of the Collège de France in Paris (FR). She is the winner of the Pollock Krasner Foundation and she resided in this context at the ISCP (International Curatorial and Studio Program) in New York (US). She was nominated for the price «Jean-François Prat» in 2016, Paris (FR).