Barbara Rosengarth's works painted during the past four years are all entitled "Pli".This title is always connected to a number combination which consists of the consecutive number of the particular piece of work and of the year it was made.
Thus "Pli 2901", done in warm orange tones with a dark red floral ornament curved in baroque style, was the 29th picture created in 2001. Likewise, "Pli 1303" with a dog's-tooth check in ochre on a cool grey-blue background is the thirteenth picture in 2003.
The word "Pli", meaning pleat, of course immediately evokes associations with fabric. In some of Barbara Rosengarth's earlier paintings of this work group such an association is quite obvious. Because of their softly flowing, graphic background, some paintings can, indeed, be taken as reminiscent of the drapery of slightly pleated pieces of clothing or of a curtain. Minimal light-shadow modulations of the individual pleats increase their sculptured appearance and create a three-dimensionality, which is, however, somewhat shallow.
What appears today as completely abstract, did, indeed, begin as the realistic or even hyper-realistic rendering of fabrics and pieces of clothing. The artist's love for detail, the fine structure and the charm of the surface had already become clearly apparent in these paintings. But in a relatively quick process, Barbara Rosen-garth moved steadily away from the realistic rendering of pieces of clothing and focussed more and more on fabric cuttings and fabric patterns.
In the course of time she continued to enlarge the cuttings on which she modelled her paintings. It soon became obvious that she was not interested in the object itself. Her paintings turned the more abstract the more closely and inquisitively she approached her motive. In other words, her interest gradually shifted from pattern to structure; the fabric ceased to be her theme and was now only the reason for painting. Drapery and ornaments offered her neutral motives for experimentally questioning the classical themes of painting such as surface structuring, texture, picture depth or colour effects.
Her more recent paintings, however, refuse to be ascribed to a fabric category. Still, the pleating, which could also consist of folded paper, remains the decisive constructive element. By its edges it defines the shape of the patterns, and it is just by this particular form (a closed one or a linear or diagonally cut one) that they in turn evoke the pleats. Pleats and patterns are mutually conditional, each element becoming visible only through the other. The result is intensive abstract compositions whose title "Pli" is really the only hint to their representational origin. In her more recent works the pleating mutated to a line which strongly reduces the depth of the pictorial space. On the other hand, the colour always remains a central theme, whether as primary, contrasting or complementary element.
Barbara Rosengarth works systematically. She uses stencils and a ruler for making patterns and pleats. Big and small dots, circles and sectors of a circle, narrow and wide stripes, but also textile motives such as the dog's-tooth check or glencheck make up such regular patterns whose uniformity is interrupted only by the irregular rhythm of the pleats. But despite all systematics and regularity the duct of the hand or setting of the brush stroke remains visible. In the most recent pictures the artistic element is even more prominent, the movement of the brush around the dots creates a very peculiar web-like structure.
Most of the time the painter applies the colour in a glazing fashion so that it shimmers through.The colour hues, which differ in some places, make the very slow, almost meditative creative process of the picture visible. Especially in larger works one can thus get an inkling that,forinstance,the background came into being narrow vertical stripe by stripe from left to right. However, in order to counteract the vertical lines of the pleats, Barbara Rosengarth often deliberately constructs her pictures in horizontal stripes.
Barbara Rosengarth's pictures are characterised by reduction.The artist not only reduces her forms to a few motives and patterns, she has also decided in favour of a single format. Her pictures are always square, making them stationary and without direction and as "all-over paintings" appearing like cuttings out of a larger whole. This minimalist tendency also applies to her colour scheme. Often her works appear to be monochrome even though it is always two colours defining the picture: the background colour and the colour of the pattern. At times she combines complementary colours which cause the pattern to start flickering when looked at just as with op-art works. In other pictures the colour play is quieter, the hues harmonise with one another and allow for an intensive more precise viewing.
It is interesting to note that the regular structure especially of the calm dotted pictures and the reticence and small piece structure even of large works measuring almost 2x2 metres cause the eye constantly to move around on the picture in search and pursuit of the irregular run of the pleats and the repeatedly broken form of the patterns, trying to grasp the picture's rhythm and the fine colour shades.
Sometimes the pattern dominates, at other times the coloured background. Especially pictures with conspicuous patterns like glen check or dog's-tooth check often have a rather restless effect which their colour combination either boosts or softens. Other pictures, on the other hand, radiate great calm. A very slight movement seems to pass through the surface of the picture noticeable only from a certain distance. Then one feels rather than recognises the existence of a number of pleats that almost unnoticeably cause this slight movement and so confer a subdued tension to the colour field in question.
Barbara Rosengarth's variations are conceptually systematic as well as poetically meditative studies of colour and space and the manifold artistic possibilities of their relationship. The differentiated application of and dealing with colour tones and structures testify to Barbara Rosengarth's impressively constant analytical research as well as her particularly distinct sure feeling for artistic values.
Translation: Joan Leisewitz