earth

Intuitively, Ulrike Arnold called her latest works "experiments." However, this does not mean that the artist used an experimental approach; rather, this title aims at an inner dimension of the new, overall smaller-format works she created during the summer of 2002 in Arizona. It expresses uncertainty about the outcome of the interplay between a poured puddle of latex and the desert's surface; uncertainty about the flowing over and coagulating on the skin of the natural earth with all her small rises, cracks, and furrows. The amorphous spot, this "non-formed," shows the landscape's rising and falling, shows terrain and not only complexion. The uncertainty lies less in the aesthetic feel; the forming hand; or the artist's decisions when, where, or how to halt the flow. Rather, it is given by the fluid medium that works like a sensor? Just like Arnold exposed her canvases occasionally to the rain and allowed it to add to the composition of the pictures with its rivulets; or like she let the moonlight limit the range of colors she used. The earth herself in her varied physiognomy enters some works like a snakelike power that cannot always be tamed and can be quite uncomfortable. Arnold's new works no longer distribute soils that have been worked and bind them to pictures that reflect the earthy color temperatures, the roughness of the ground and simultaneously stand testimony to the artist's initiative of form. Ulrike Arnold's new works are not pictures; rather, they are signatures, prints of the earth in a singular presence: they are not similar to the earth; they are the earth herself.

Dr. Wilfried Doerstel

Text about the latest latex works.