"All Sins Are Murder Even As All Life Is War"

Unlike previous Piene’s dialogues with great masters (such as Egon Schiele, or Hans Bellmer) this pairing with Erna Rosenstein does not focus on formal similarities. This conversation goes beyond the surface.

The uniqueness of Piene’s line is in the movement of her hand, which oscillates between the energy of the unknown and the gravity of something human, and visceral. The trace of her charcoal path reveals just enough to feel the vibration of a hidden structure. Her figures bear the strange heartbeat of unpredictable numbers. This play of seen and unseen are connected to Piene’s interest in anthropology and background in art history. Her work grants access to an unexplored space both universal, and timeless as if the ethereal has been anchored.

Rosenstein’s intimate oeuvre exercises an irresistible charm of sensibility spoken with a low and fragile voice. The trauma of the holocaust haunted the Polish Jewish artist, who has chosen to address this experience in a poetic and indirect way. Rosenstein endured the murder of her parents; among some of the lines drawn with ink hides a remembrance of deadly cuts and the blade of the knife of the tragic night. The moon in the painting is wounded. The past and present coexist in the space of her artwork.

For both artists it is the drawn line that becomes the key to what would otherwise lie buried.


http://chloepiene.com/

https://culture.pl/en/artist/erna-rosenstein