Svenja Deininger. Calvairate

About

Through her improvisational process of painting, revising, and repainting, Deininger reveals abstract compositions defined by layered planes of rich colors, subtle textures, and delicate patterns. Beginning with a single form—little more than a shadow or memory of form—Deininger's compositions unfold slowly over time, as she carefully reworks the surfaces, revealing areas of opaque color and raw linen alongside thick, layered patches of color. Products of time, place, and process, Deininger's paintings nevertheless seem to deny all evidence of their making-their surfaces preternaturally devoid of brushstrokes, the layers of paint visible at the edges of the canvas providing the only index for how the work came into being.

With Calvairate, Deininger presents a new suite of untitled paintings, developed concurrently over the course of the past year in her Milan studio. With these paintings, Deininger builds upon an earlier body of work, borrowing shapes, patterns, and colors she has used before. Formed by gently curving vertical lines and rounded corners and subtle cross-hatching, these visual motifs appear and reappear throughout the exhibition—modulating slightly upon each recurrence. Rich, saturated hues—indigo and cerulean, crimson and maroon, chartreuse—appear throughout the work, lending these paintings a concreteness unusual for Deininger's work. 

Understood, at first, as pure abstraction, Deininger's work is not—like much of the history of geometric abstraction—a rejection of the physical world; rather, the artist's intuitive geometries offer ceaseless allusions to the material. Amidst undulating planes of saturated color and delicate patterning, horizontal forces begin to suggest landscapes and vertical lines hint at the architectural while curves form figures and bodies. Within Deininger's paintings, these worldly allusions form a conversation amongst themselves-and with the viewer—taking on new associations and meanings as they emerge again and again throughout the exhibition. The compositions become akin to blueprints or maps, as if, in the intermingling of pattern and texture and color, Deininger is building a world entirely her own.

Calvairate borrows its title from the Milanese neighborhood where the artist lives—where this body of work was made. Located southeast of the city's center, the largely residential district has deep roots in the region—the neighborhood dates to sometime in the 16th century. On a map, the neighborhood appears as a small, irregular rectangle with curved corners—a shape that, without being planned as such, recurs throughout the paintings in the exhibition. 

With Calvairate, Deininger continues a conversation that began not with this body of work, but with the entirety of her practice—or perhaps well before she ever started painting. There is boundless possibility to her imagery: entering the carefully installed exhibition, the viewer has the sense that they are wandering into a conversation begun long ago—or perhaps wandering down an old, barely remembered city street. For a moment, the viewer sits down at a sidewalk cafe to join this wandering conversation, enriching it with their own experiences, with their own insights. Eventually, they leave, comfortable in the knowledge that the conversation continues, that this city block will persist. And perhaps, upon the viewer's return, the conversation has returned to the same themes, the street is recognized once again—but understood anew.