2016, 
Text by Ludwig Seyfarth
Always a new Game - the Painting of Isabelle Dyckerhoff

During the 20th century the story about the end of painting or its consequential coming-to-an-end was repeatedly told - and with a special humour by Harold Rosenberg. Although the American art critic was one of the spokespeople for post-war abstraction in the US, he was somewhat sceptical about its increasing trend towards reduction: “Newman had closed the door, Rothko had pulled down the shades, and Reinhardt had turned out the lights.”1

It was not the first time the light went out for painting. Marcel Duchamp had already extinguished it in 1914 when he intellectually rebuked the medium for its purely retinal effects and put aside his own paintbrush. Not only this ‘end of painting’, but all others that have been attested to have proven not to be true, as everybody knows; the alleged corpse repeatedly gets up again. Rosenberg’s witticism also sets no definitive end point, but poses the question:read more ...
who switches the lights on again, who opens the shades again and who opens the door?
The question anyway remains of whether all relevant moves in painting have already been made, and if the lights go on again, is the performance over, does the audience applaud and go home? Or does the history of painting continue regardless of how dead the medium is declared to be?
Perhaps all these stories of an end are based on a false theoretical model - as if painting deals with a
series of soluble problems that can be successively dealt with, as Ludwig Wittgenstein dealt with language in his Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus. He then, however, determined that language is not a timeless, logical construct but can manifest differently with each new ‘language-game’, as he later demonstrated in his Philosophical Investigations.
Assertions of the end of painting follow the logic of Wittgenstein’s Tractacus. They imply that at
some point everything that can be painted has been painted and the brush can be put down for good.
So Isabelle Dyckerhoff does not need to take up the brush because all the questions that she
negotiates or handles in her paintings have long been answered. Many painters of course have dealt with the compositional distribution of colour accents on a monochrome surface, with the
relationship between surface and space, with the complex relationship between figure and ground or
with the balancing of vertical and horizontal sequences. It is interesting, however, that in trying to describe Isabelle Dyckerhoff’s paintings almost nothing is said about which ‘questions’ her images
answer.
As every image is, in the end, a new image, the history of painting cannot be appropriately
presented if one explains it as a linear progress or the resolution of problems. The painter stands
before each new canvas much more as if in front of the starting whistle of a new game whose
outcome is as yet unknown.
The problems of painting are as little ‘resolved’ as the millions of chess games and football matches
that have already been played make it superfluous to play again and again. The painter, Stephan
Baumkötter, once said to me: “Art and football are comparable above all in that most of it fails and
then one is so happy when something succeeds.”

Bad painting is not that which reminds one of already existing pictures (how can that be avoided?) but that do not risk failing, i.e., they look as if the problems of painting have been solved and do not have to be readdressed. Bad painting is just routine, it no longer confronts the risk of failing - in other words, we know from the beginning how the game will end.
To know that it is not enough to name Isabelle Dyckerhoff’s influences or those she admires that her paintings refer back to. For then we must assume that we can say in advance how the game
continues or ends, i.e., which paintings she would make next. Whoever believes that nothing new is
to be discovered in the playing field of Isabelle Dyckerhoff’s paintings might also not have been
surprised by the latest works. For, in comparison to previous works, they are far more reduced, the
colour accents applied with paintbrush or spatula are no longer set in more or less systematic rows
but are mostly clearly anchored in the image ground as solitary markings. The ground itself is now applied in differentiated shades of colour and is less a ground covered in active forms but one that is deliberately brought into one’s perception by the coloured accents it carries.
Ludwig Seyfarth

1 Harold Rosenberg, The Anxious Object [1964], New York: Collier Books, 1973, p. 77.
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2016, 
Catalogue 2014/2015
2013, 
Text by Ludwig Seyfarth
Isabelle Dyckerhoff belongs to a generation of painters who have sufficient temporal - and if one still wants to call it postmodern - distance to the trench warfares of the avant-garde to be able to look back with a certain calmness at the extensive offerings that have been disseminated in decades of pioneering work in the ensuing age.
Within the radical variants of non-objective painting, colour and form should mean just that, as the young artist, Maurice Denis proclaimed in 1890: read more ...
‘We should remember that a picture – before being a war horse, a nude woman, or telling some other story – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours arranged in a particular pattern.’
A surface covered in colours arranged in a certain order: at first sight, Isabelle Dyckerhoff’s images from 2013 could be described thus, but even so, nothing has yet been said. The ordering is based on criteria such as linearity, seriality and repetition, developed as the leading criteria of non-objective painting against the technical-industrial background of the first half of the 20th century. Thus can individual colour accents spread loosely in horizontal rows on a light ground over the surface, or combine into a many-layered crust, similar to many works of the Informel in the ‘50s, although the strong colours are more reminiscent of Nicolas de Staël.
What Isabelle Dyckerhoff seems to place spontaneously on the canvas, follows rather a series of fixed parameters that involve multiple rejections and protracted re-workings.
Her painting is in the end more informal than conceptual. Instead of following a preconceived concept in several steps, she seems to orient herself more towards Heinz von Foerster’s dictum, always to act so that the number of possibilities increases. In other words: none of her images are a resolution that answers questions or cuts off other possibilities. Rather, every picture is a new starting point, a kind of platform from which new pictorial solutions can be envisaged.
Thus Isabelle Dyckerhoff’s painting expresses an attitude to life in a time that is no longer marked by linearly operating machines, but by reflection, constant retrievability, erasability and changeability. It is painting in the digital age that is inspired less by a ‘digital aesthetic’ than that everything that has already been in non-objective painting is available in terms of questions and ‘solutions’.
However, Isabelle Dyckerhoff consciously resists the ‘postmodern’ possibility of quoting from and rearranging the rich fund of art history. She remains in a way loyal to Modernism and the dictum of Maurice Denis: each image is initially a tabula rasa, independent of all her knowledge, experience and skills that must first be covered with colour. Yet, unlike many purists of abstraction, she does not attempt to suppress suggested associations. It is left to the viewer’s inner eye whether a colourful carpet, a landscape, a window or a city silhouette appears.



Translation: Heather Allen


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2010, 
The Lightness of Colour
by Birgit Szepanski

Colour is manifold. It is created by and within light, it is variable and contains colour tones that unfold and disappear again as the light falls, thus leading to the opacity that makes colour so fascinating.
To denote a colour we use words that define the properties of a colour tone, describe the degrees of falling light, or indicate sensual experience with something material. Blue can be ultramarine or azure, cobalt or Prussian blue – the name always says something about the way the colour is created or about its essence – about seas and skies, liquid and translucent materials and the way we experience nature. Colours are therefore always imagined spaces, fields of the imagination for memories of nature and the sensuality of the material world. read more ...


Isabelle Dyckerhoff paints colour-spaces that display all of these characteristics and properties of colour. In her painting she draws on and gives form to memories and imaginations of colour, presenting its temporality alongside the wealth of its tones. Her pictures thus develop a wide range of colour and sensuality. Playing with warm and cool tones and the haptic presence of colour as paint or varnish generates a manifold space for colour. Within this gesturally reduced field of painting, whose essence consists of openness and permissiveness, Dyckerhoff paints her lyrical pictures.

What is this lyrical element? It is a lightness that arises within the conjoined fields of form and colour. The many layers of colour, fields, and outlined shapes all resound together and adjacent to each other, within their close relations of mutual influence. In this way cross-referenced density and volume are generated, and individual colour values seem to dissolve into one manifold and multiple sense of colour, while at the same time the reverse transpires and single colours begin to emerge from the whole, to vibrate, to shift and expand beyond the outlines of shapes and forms. The colour field is thus always the background and foreground for individual essences of colour that both flow into it and resound from it. This is why it is possible to speak of lyrical spaces of colour in Isabelle Dyckerhoff‘s pictures, as the colours set off a narrative flow of countless fields of imagination and spaces of memory in the mind of the viewer. The space of painting becomes a poetical pictorial space.

The gesture and the shape of the colour fields, whether horizontally layered or facing each other in cell-like forms, whether delicately varnished or in dynamic movement, also create poetic moments in these paintings. The viewer can follow the various rhythms of movement in a painting, and in tracing them perceive the work as a multi-dimensional enclosed space. In Isabelle Dyckerhoff’s work the effects of colour are always designed to be manifold. Colour is a bearer of light and expansion in space, it is both material and subject. It is possible to experience this when looking at a painting from some distance, where the colours display an intensive and interlaced depth. When looking close up you see colours in superimposed layers, which reveal their tactile materiality, or in fine varnishes in which the canvas shines out like a tonal fabric.

Alongside the lyrical element, chance plays a significant role in Isabelle Dyckerhoff’s work. She allows the space for chance. The various acts of painting are highly concentrated. While painting Dyckerhoff balances out emphases, tensions, moments of resistance and harmonies within the space of the work, so that the picture gradually assumes its form via a very finely tuned process. The moment when the colours and the fields of the painting attain autonomy—somewhere between chance and conscious control—is the moment when the picture can now stand for itself. Dyckerhoff’s approach to painting means that each work has an aura of chance, permission, and also certainty, all reminding us of the natural world. Through the many decisions she makes when painting, Dyckerhoff forms a unique and authentic space for colour and its tones and manifestations. Form is a supporting painterly element in the process.

All of this – the lyrical, what is permitted, and the manifold – makes it necessary to look at the work with an open mind, knowing that painting in its original sense is and can be a transferring manifoldness. For Isabelle Dyckerhoff painting is above all an intense pleasure in the sensuality and the effects of colour, which stands and works as a value in itself. It is hardly possible to give a name to all of these differently sounding, pure and layered colours that a Dyckerhoff painting contains and that unfold there, for like light her painting is agile, rich in spectrum, and highly atmospheric.

Light lies in direct proximity to darkness. Isabelle Dyckerhoff also includes this characteristic of colour as a transparent and ephemeral element in her painting. Light and dark are sensual painterly stimuli flowing between an imagined depth and surface space. Darker colours always also contain bright nuances, as their graduations speak of time and recall memories of the past. From one painting to the next, Isabelle Dyckerhoff creates new variations or themes that have come about through her work on a picture – leading to the great variety of intensively bright and also dark colours, and of delicate surface varnishes and deep layers. With each new painting the painter embarks on a new beginning, which yet already encompasses comprehensive variety. One painting is like a fragment of Dyckerhoff’s entire work, while the variations are in the artistic format.

If the viewer is open to Dyckerhoff’s manifold spaces of colour and movements in colour, then colour becomes a sensual and also mental material. As colour effects unfold in the process and rhythms of seeing, they have an intense presence. Through this painterly sense of presence Isabelle Dyckerhoff unfolds the lightness and poetic materiality of colours that lie within the realm of painting.

Translation by Greg Bond
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2010, 
Coexistence The Two Parallel Worlds of Isabelle Dyckerhoff
by Barbara Rollmann-Boretty

What is good art – this is a question that will never find a satisfying answer, even if all requested criteria have been fulfilled. Also for an artist himself one of the most difficult things is to evaluate his own work once it has been completed. It is, therefore, quite legitimate to describe the creative process of painting as a hovering between intellectual decisions and intuition (spontaneous work). Artists often speak about an inner drive that guides them through their work. Routine and ease on one hand or curiosity and daring on the other hand are the options an artist has. Within the abstract-expressionist painting one can rather watch stylistic movements than points of view. Nowadays with a strong tendency to realism in both painting and photography, abstract expressionism is, as a contrast, pure painting: its aim being the intensive correlation between composition and colour. read more ...


Within this field Isabelle Dyckerhoff works with various technical and stylistic terms of expression. In a very relaxed way she lets things happen without influencing them. Her work is diverse but always recognisable and authentic. This diversity in her work is a result of her accepting processes without interfering and without trying to guide them on an intellectual level. Dyckerhoff’s artistic process is also based on the improvement of her pictorial statements. This process, however, does not happen in phases but in stylistic ideas that alternate as well as overlap within her pictures. The artist will for example construct a painting with very strong layers of colour and contours and a moment later she will work in light veils of pastel covering the next large canvas. It nearly seems as if she needed these strong contrasts to remain thrilled by her work.

Very different from the historical positions of abstract expressionism which succeded in undoing (disolving) shapes, her work rather seems to be devoted to the corporeal. Looking at Isabelle Dyckerhoff’s work the association of landscapes arise that are formed through cushions of colour positioned side by side. Often they look like detailed micro landscapes, and others even remind us of very colourful maps or patchwork quilts. Some paintings let us think of natural stone walls with their many different shapes and shades of colour in the sunlight. Others let us believe that we are looking in a blooming garden, and others again even seem to open up a view of the sky and clouds. This way reality is never quite out of reach. Per Kirkeby, the great Danish artist and nature scientist, whom our painter admires, works in a similar way. He also directs the fantasy of the viewer within his abstract landscapes of colour onto areas that look like stone formations.

Isabelle Dyckerhoff works partly with the spatula, scratching hatchings into the paint and creating agglomerations, in order to emphasize the densness of her oil paintings. Her style is gestural when she applies the amorphous zones of colour – and she takes great effort in using different techniques to differentiate certain areas.The layers of colour make a nearly three dimensional impression. In this way the paintings open up and offer the feeling of space and depth. The amount of layers and density of these oil canvases are extreemly packed with narrative elements and the viewer cannot help wanting to explore the paintings over and over again. This may also originate in their independence, as they do not want to resemble anything or evoke any associations.

In the more recent works there is a tendency towards reduction and figuration. There are horizontally constructed paintings (Berlin pictures no. 42, page xy), that can be interpreted as urban landscapes. They concentrate on giving hints of constructions and citylike areas, while dark grey and brown (the uncovered canvas) dominate the colour scheme and thus create the atmosphere.
Another group of recent works grow through the art of absence: in these paintings Dyckerhoff enjoys the lightness in her work even more and just uses thin layers of colour. Over a clearly grounded canvas she pours out cascades of fluffy colour that form a large arch. This new tendency in Dyckerhoff’s work was initiated by a group of smaller paintings that left a rather large part of the canvas untouched and set the idea of a landscape so lightly and casually that one believed in looking at followers of the Tunis pictures by August Macke (see Isabelle Dyckerhoff Paintings 3, p.6).

The colours of a painting, as well as the strengh or lightness of the paint on the canvas, can provoke associations and transport feelings. Isabelle Dyckerhoff has a very good feeling in the use of colours and her variety is vast. She loves using very strong and luminous colours which she confronts with each other within the structure of the composition as if they had to generate energy like the two poles of a battery. But the artist also knows the importance of grounding: the energetic compositions are calmed down by muddy grey and brown tones. If one examines the individual colours one will discover that very few basic colours are being used. Almost every colour is a special mixture that has been created with care. The result are entirely individual worlds of colour which sometimes, through the strong contrasts, provoke a nearly aggressive tension within the paintings and in others they are woven together very harmoniously.
The contrasts are the most fascinating part of this oeuvre: a strong and gesturally well structured picture might be followed by an enormous painting in most delicate pastels, which only seem to be powdered on to the canvas - and the observer is attracted by both of these completely (controverse styles) different expressions of art.


Translation by Antonia Boswell-Ellbogen
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2009, 
Isabelle Dyckerhoff: Abstrakte Malerei im globalisierten Reich der Zeichen
by Birgit Sonna (german)

Das Bekenntnis zu einer ästhetisch hochgradig verfeinerten Bildsprache schließt sich mit dezidierter Zeitzeugenschaft in der Kunst heute nicht mehr aus. Die Ära, in der sich gerade die Vertreter der abstrakten Kunst gegen den meist von rigiden Konzeptualisten erhobenen Formalismus-Vorwurf verteidigen musste, ist jedenfalls längst vorüber. Insbesondere die abstrakte Malerei hat wieder ein nahezu unübersehbares neues Terrain in der Kunstwelt gewonnen. Ob es sich nun um die neogeometrische Malerei oder um faszinierend frische Tendenzen des Abstrakten Expressionismus handelt, zu Recht wird die Renaissance der nichtgegenständlichen Malerei als befreiende Kraft wider das Diktat eines nach vordergründig politischen Inhalten schielenden Kunstengagements empfunden. Und doch hat sich etwas Entscheidendes seit der Nachkriegsabstraktion verändert. read more ...
Ging es in den fünfziger Jahren vorrangig darum, die Kunst in Europa nicht zuletzt über ihren Autonomieanspruch aus dem Joch jener faschistischen Barbarei zu lösen, die sie so lange für ihre propagandistischen Zwecke vor die Kandare gespannt hatte, so reflektiert die abstrakte Malerei ein halbes Jahrhundert später vor allem ihren Status Quo in dem Koordinatennetz zwischen der nachbebenden Tradition der utopistischen Moderne und ihrer heutigen gesellschaftlichen Relevanz. Unter den Vorzeichen dieses Spannungsverhältnis ist auch Isabelle Dyckerhoffs Malerei zu betrachten.

Seit Isabelle Dyckerhof sich in der Münchner Kunstwelt und darüber hinaus als abstrakte Malerin positioniert, also seit rund zehn Jahren, scheinen auf ihren Bilder die Farben – in Felder aufgeteilt oder zu einem Fleckenkonglomerat zusammengeballt – ein relativ agiles Eigenleben zu führen. Die All-Over-Strukturen des sich in welcher Ausprägung auch immer über die Leinwand legenden Farbtextur wirken wie intuitiv gefunden. Doch der Eindruck trügt: Anders als etwa Jackson Pollocks impulsiv vorgenommenes Farb-'Dripping' oder auch die spontan gesetzten Farbflecken der französischen Tachisten, geht selbst den unregelmäßigsten Farbverläufen auf Dyckerhoffs Bildern ein langwieriger und reflektiver Arbeitsprozess aus teilweise wieder verworfenen Setzungen voraus. Im Zentrum der Expedition in die räumlichen Ausdehnungs- wie Kontraktionsmöglichkeit der Farbe steht deren changierende Intensität, wie sie sich unter Maßgabe der jeweiligen koloristischen Nachbarschaft auf oft frappierende Weise einstellt. Ein Ton besteht niemals nur für sich, Isabelle Dyckerhoff entfaltet eine ganze Partitur an vielstimmigen Farbklängen. In der Regel setzten sich Dyckerhoffs Kompositionen aus mehreren Farbfeldern oder eben Farborganismen zusammen, die Schicht für Schicht aufgetragen werden. Prima vista könnte man meinen, dass die Bildlösungen sich aus geradlinigen und simplen Kettenreaktionen ergeben. Das Gegenteil ist vielmehr der Fall: Dyckerhoff entwickelt sie während eines langwierigen experimentellen Prozesses, bei dem die Interferenzen von Farbe, Form und Struktur auch in ihren ungewöhnlichsten Kombinationen erprobt werden.

Wieder und wieder verändert Isabelle Dyckerhoff im Laufe des Malprozesses die Erscheinungsformen der Farbe, egal ob sich deren Verdichtungen am Ende als Balken, Rechtecke oder auch Flecken manifestieren. Sie überschneiden sich oder verschmelzen miteinander, sind voneinander scharf abgegrenzt oder löschen sich gegenseitig aus. Spezifische Töne verschwinden partiell, um andernorts unter veränderten Bedingungen wieder aufzutauchen. Mal sind die Ränder ausgefranst, mal organisch gerundet, mal schnurgerade. Fast immer scheint eine tiefer liegende Farbschicht unter der opaken Oberflächenhaut durch. Durch das als »Multilayering« bezeichnete Verfahren verschmilzt nach und nach die flächig aufgetragene Farbe mit dem Grund und die einzelnen Farbpartien werden schließlich zu einem leuchtenden Amalgam von vitaler Raumwirkung. Ähnlich wie bei dem Malerheros Mark Rothko beginnt die Farbe wie von innen heraus zu atmen und zu pulsieren, gerade die tachistisch gehaltenen Kompositionen Dyckerhoffs lassen die Farbwolken im gleichsam dynamisierten Bildraum schweben. Das komplexe Bezugssystem der Farben, der eigenwillige Klang und Rhythmus der Töne, die Kontraste und Valeurs, der Pinselduktus und Farbauftrag bringen Dynamik, Temperatur und Leben in den ursprünglich planen starren Bildgrund und machen Farbe zu einem Ereignis. Damit nicht genug, Isabelle Dyckerhoff ist nicht nur eine Koloristin wie sie im Buche steht, sondern sie versichert sich auch immer wieder ihrer heute keineswegs mehr selbstverständlichen Rolle einer abstrakten Malerin.

Aus einer gewissen Skepsis heraus kam es, dass Isabelle Dyckerhoff 2006 in einem eigens in Berlin angemieteten Atelier freiwillig in Klausur ging und das eingeschränkte Stimmungsfeld über die expressiven Nuancierungen ihrer Malerei auslotete. Durch das Rahmenmotiv eines Schaufensters gingen die Außeneindrücke wie über einen Filter in die halbgeometrisch, halborganisch strukturierten Bilderserie ein. Der Zyklus 'Berliner Bilder I (1-6)' reflektiert den berühmten Fensterblick der Malerei auf ambivalent subjektivierte und realistisch im Kunsthype von Berlin verortete Weise. Topographisch kann und soll man nicht erkennen, um welche Architekturdetails es sich bei den gegenständlichen Abbreviaturen im Einzeln handelt. Der Reiz liegt vielmehr im völlig vagen Erahnen von Motiven wie Pfeiler, Fassaden, Bäumen und auch Wettergegebenheiten. Es ist ihre sich Schritt für Schritt vortastende Haltung zur Welt, die Isabelle Dyckerhoff als Malerin auf der Höhe der Zeit auszeichnet. Wenn sich ein Magazin wie 'Texte zu Kunst' in einer ganzen Ausgabe (März 2008) der Abstraktion widmet, dann heißt das auch, wie gesellschaftspolitisch brisant das Thema in Zeiten der Globalisierung über die ästhetischen Implikationen hinaus geworden ist. So fragt etwa Sven Lütticken in seinem Aufsatz 'Leben mit Abstraktion': 'In welchem Verhältnis steht dann aber die abstrakte Kunst zur zunehmend 'Abstrakten Welt'? Und wie kann dieses Verhältnis heute konzeptualisiert werden, nachdem die Formensprache der Abstraktion im Gewand des korporativen Designs immer neue Urstände feiert und die in abstrakten Zeichen codierte Information zur Leitwährung immaterieller Ökonomien avanciert ist?'

Dyckerhoff sucht derartige Fragestellungen mit nachhaltiger Experimentierlust auf der Klaviatur ihrer Farbpalette immer weiter einzukreisen: Sie analysiert die heutigen Parameter der abstrakten Farbfeldmalerei über ein dichtes Netz aus Bezügen. Es ist eine Malerei, die ohne ihre Vorläufer gar nicht mehr zu lesen ist, ob sie nun Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Willem de Kooning, Clifford Still, Ernst Wilhelm Nay oder Jerry Zeniuk heißen. Daher rührt die auch bis in die koloristische Oberflächenbehandlung phänomenologisch aufgeladene Energie der Bilder. Auf einer Metaebene wird das prekäre Verhältnis zwischen retinaler Überwältigung, historischer Quellenerforschung und dem Ist-Zustand der Gesellschaft sichtbar. Man kann die Malerei heute nicht mehr neu erfinden, Isabelle Dyckerhoffs vielfältig sich zwischen den Polen der Geometrie und dem Abstrakten Expressionismus abspielende Organisation der Farben verankert das nichtgegenständliche Idiom im Hier und Jetzt einer rasant flottierenden Welt: einer verschlüsselten Welt des mittlerweile universal gesteuerten Tauschhandels, die materiell nur mehr schwer greifbar ist.
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2009, 
Ausstellung Farbcode München Katalogtext
by Daniela Silvestrin (in german)

Isabelle Dyckerhoffs Arbeiten bestechen durch die von ihnen ausgehende Harmonie der Bildlösung und die in sich stimmige Farbkomposition. Ohne gefällig zu sein schaffen es die Bilder, den Betrachter anzuziehen, zu beschäftigen und zu einer Entdeckungstour durch die verschiedenen Farbklänge und –schichten anzuregen. Diese Farbkompositionen entstehen in einem langwierigen Arbeitsprozess, der über Monate hinweg andauern kann. Dyckerhoff beginnt dabei mit einer Idee oder spontanen Inspiration aus ihrer Umwelt, manchmal nur ein schneller Blick aus dem Fenster, und tritt dann in einen Dialog mit der Leinwand. Sie setzt Farbe auf die Leinwand und reagiert darauf. read more ...
So werden in diesem Prozess Stellen oft wieder übermalt, manchmal vollkommen, manchmal nur partiell, oder aber die darüber gesetzte Farbe lässt später noch etwas von der darunterliegenden Vergangenheit durchschimmern.
Durch diese Technik des schichtweisen Farbauftrags über größere Zeiträume hinweg schafft es Isabelle Dyckerhoff, sich in das Bild hinein zu projizieren und sich gleichzeitig davon zu lösen. Wichtig ist ihr dabei, nie zu sehr an ihrer Anfangsidee festzuhalten, sondern sich vom Zufall, der Spontaneität und der Leinwand selbst führen zu lassen, bis sich im Laufe der Arbeit eine bewegte, lebendige Fläche entwickelt, in der die Farben zu ihrer vollen Leuchtkraft gelangen und ein Gleichgewicht zwischen unterschiedlichen Farbtönen und -klängen und den sich überschneidenden, ineinander übergehenden oder auch scharf abgegrenzten Farbflächen entsteht.

Leiten lässt sich Isabelle Dyckerhoff dabei sowohl von dem Raum und der Helligkeit der Umgebung des entstehenden Bildes, als auch von der Leinwand selbst: eine weiß grundierte Leinwand ist bei der Künstlerin damit nie nur Träger des Bildes, sondern wird als wesentlicher Teil in die Komposition einbezogen.

Isabelle Dyckerhoffs Freude an Farbe macht diese in ihren Bildern zu einem Ereignis und die Bilder selbst zu einem Erlebnis. Indem sie die Farbe und deren Komposition nicht dazu verwendet, die Illusion einer bis ins Unkenntliche abstrahierten Form zu schaffen, wird die Farbe selbst zum eigentlichen Zweck ihrer Malerei. Isabelle Dyckerhoff unterwirft sich keiner konzeptionellen Aussage oder dem Zwang, etwas völlig Neues zu kreieren, wodurch ihre Bilder nur sie selbst sind und nicht vorgeben, etwas anderes zu sein: Im Mittelpunkt der Arbeiten bleibt immer die Ausdruckskraft der Farbe und ihre räumliche Wirkung.
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