In her earlier paintings, Gabriele Dauerer depicted people, seated at tables piled high with food, who seemed driven by an inexorable greed. In her most recent works, the human figure has been replaced by abstract forms comprised, actually, of hangers that have been crossed to form shapes so that the original elements are no longer recognizable. There is no focal point in these works, rather the forms spread in all directions, covering the surfaces in an avalanche of brightly colored shapes. Much like the gluttonous people in Dauerer’s earlier paintings grasping for food, these forms claim the space with a determined and surprising force.

Her drawings are somewhat different, more reflective of a search for a lost balance than of the desire to conquer and consume. Here quickly sketched forms seem to have come into being as if by chance and are reproduced as mirror images on the same piece of paper. In these works, there is a tension between order and chaos, between the symmetry of the shapes and the pages torn from law books on which the shapes are painted in black. In her drawings, Dauerer seems to be pointing to a universe where our laws may no longer apply, while in her paintings she suggests an order where all is chaos, albeit one with a logic of its own. In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, “That which occurs has such an advantage over our intentions that we never recover and never experience it as it really appeared.”

—Noemi Smolik

Translated from the German by Franz Peter Hugdahl.