Galerie Friese
Galerie Friese

SOULVA
Anna Leonhardt

February 8th – April 5th 2025

We are used to reading a succession, a temporal sequence in pictures, just as we experience it in life. In Anna Leonhardt's work, one might initially think: there is a background to the picture, which is the foil for the appearance of shiny, shimmering colour forms. An event of painting takes place on the surfaces of the background, which says a lot about Anna Leonhardt's understanding of art. We are dealing with the material of colour in its most beautiful form, because it acts as such and at the same time evokes associations. On it are abstract forms in which a tremendous interaction takes place, an inner and outer dialogue of colour with itself and the viewer. As with the so-called background of the picture itself, the dialogue is about the in-between, about pathos and the importance of the incidental. Sometimes, it seems, all that matters in a picture is this small trace of colour, this difference, which is almost forgotten in the face of all the well-considered details of the precisely composed whole. If you notice the constant change, it also becomes obvious that, contrary to our habit, we are not dealing with a succession of pictorial forms, but with a picture that declares all these questions obsolete. It casts a spell over us because it allows us to experience painting and, at the same time, the emotions and thoughts that this painting evokes. The painting is simple and complex at the same time and makes us and our lives talk.

Anna Leonhardt, born in Pforzheim in 1981, studied at the Dresden University of Fine Arts and was a master student of Ralf Kerbach. She has lived and worked in New York for several years. The exhibition ‘SOULVA’ is Anna's first solo exhibition at Galerie Friese. She is showing new works, all of which were created in Berlin, where she also has a studio.

 

 

 

SOULVA
Anna Leonhardt

February 8th – April 5th 2025

We are used to reading a succession, a temporal sequence in pictures, just as we experience it in life. In Anna Leonhardt's work, one might initially think: there is a background to the picture, which is the foil for the appearance of shiny, shimmering colour forms. An event of painting takes place on the surfaces of the background, which says a lot about Anna Leonhardt's understanding of art. We are dealing with the material of colour in its most beautiful form, because it acts as such and at the same time evokes associations. On it are abstract forms in which a tremendous interaction takes place, an inner and outer dialogue of colour with itself and the viewer. As with the so-called background of the picture itself, the dialogue is about the in-between, about pathos and the importance of the incidental. Sometimes, it seems, all that matters in a picture is this small trace of colour, this difference, which is almost forgotten in the face of all the well-considered details of the precisely composed whole. If you notice the constant change, it also becomes obvious that, contrary to our habit, we are not dealing with a succession of pictorial forms, but with a picture that declares all these questions obsolete. It casts a spell over us because it allows us to experience painting and, at the same time, the emotions and thoughts that this painting evokes. The painting is simple and complex at the same time and makes us and our lives talk.

Anna Leonhardt, born in Pforzheim in 1981, studied at the Dresden University of Fine Arts and was a master student of Ralf Kerbach. She has lived and worked in New York for several years. The exhibition ‘SOULVA’ is Anna's first solo exhibition at Galerie Friese. She is showing new works, all of which were created in Berlin, where she also has a studio.

 

 

 

WORKS