Christiane Baumgartner
Christiane Baumgartner, who combines contemporary technology in the form of digital photography and video alongside time-honoured woodcutting techniques, depicts the effects of sunlight and moonlight in these new works.
Many of her prints take the form of diptychs or sequences of images illustrating the same scene, captured moments apart. Pink Moon, 2019, is a new series of six woodcuts depicting the moon on the horizon. The imagery is taken from stills of a film Baumgartner recorded whilst driving across Rügen, a German island in the Baltic Sea, on a late April evening. The island is formed of megalithic graves and hills, one of which can be traced in the landscape of Pink Moon.
This Online Viewing Room includes two unique works from Baumgartner’s new series entitled ‘Contre-jour’ which means “against daylight”. The title refers to a photographic technique in which the camera is pointing directly towards the source of light. These large-scale woodcuts record daylight shining through a wooded landscape against blue and red backdrops. Baumgartner states; “The trees give a latticework what both covers and emphasises the light and the superimposed background. I love the idea of the unseen in this image. I think the technique of contre-jour is more about what you do not see; it is about the invisible in the picture.”
A smaller print, entitled, Mahicannituck, made in 2018, depicts light reflecting off the surface of the Hudson River in New York. Mahicannituck was the name given to this body of water by the Mahican people.
Baumgartner has had several solo exhibitions at the Cristea Roberts Gallery and recent presentations at Manif d’Art - The Quebec City Biennial, Canada (2019); Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Massachusetts (2018); and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2017). Her work is held in major public collections around the world including the Albertina, Vienna; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and National Gallery Victoria, Australia.
Baumgartner lives and works in Leipzig, Germany
