The search for what is behind

Andrea Bischof´s conception of painting is characterized by formal reduction and a great richness  of color. Her paintings are the result of a working process in which the conditions of current painterly practice form just as much of an indispensable component as her recourse to growth and formal development in nature.

The painter works in image sequences, in series that continually vary her core pictorial notions anew and transform them using diverse techniques. At the center of her artistic thinking is the search for what is behind, the endeavor to make visible that which is hidden, an image, so to say, of our search for a hidden memory. Hereby her painting lacks every figurative link to visual experience: she limits herself to color, light, composition and to leaving open the medium she has chosen. Soft, rounded, wavy forms dominate, and open points of color or loose color curls are spread across the many-layered surfaces of her paintings.

They cannot be pinned down exactly, but merge instead into a distant interplay of form, light and color. This quality is precisely what gives Andrea Bischof´s paintings the ability to activate our consciousness, our memory. Her works do not call to mind memories of seen things, but memories of moods and feelings. The renunciation of the pathos formulas of expression and gesturalism make  her works into cheerful and subtle images, which achieve their playful airiness through an intensive process of concentration and compaction.

Susanne Berchtold