Rune Mields translates ordering structures and schemata into art, combining logic and ratio with poetry and magic. Her paintings and drawings are usually held in black, white and grey and are highly visual despite all conceptuality. They are characterized by the integration of symbols which derive from different order systems on which our society is based, such as numbers, words, notes, as well as abstract signs and ornaments. Side by side to the research and visualizing of number systems, she sets the magical or ritual significance of numbers existing in many cultures. Scientific concepts and questions are superimposed on mythical or metaphysical ideas. Thus, the underlying elements of her work are the portrayal of infinity and the limitation of our ability to think and imagine.
The solo exhibition ZEITEN UND ZEICHEN unites works by different groups of works from Rune Mields‘ total of six decades of artistic creation. In addition, new works from two first-issued series will be exhibited. The focus of the works shown is on the one hand on the representability of time in the form of numbers, on the other hand on the representation of numbers and other signs in different times and systems.
The tour concludes with two works that can also be read as a self-reflexive meta-comment on the other works in the exhibition and Rune Mields‘ method of making visible and citing: The artist encounters us in a Selbstportait mit Telefon (2015), (Self-portrait with Telephone) which quotes a self-portrait by Maria Lassnig. She takes withdraw to this attribute but illustrates the subjective, artificial intervention behind every representation of the abstract. Rune Mields makes the invisible visible, the viewer has to decrypt the encrypted. Both happen indirectly and limited by our ability to reason and availability of signs. While the works force viewers to closely observe and try to unravel the overlapping of different content and visual levels, Mields‘ work refers to the statement of the physicist and aphorist Georg Friedrich Lichtenberg quoted in one of her paintings of the same title: “Die Hauptsache ist immer unsichtbar" (2014) (“The essential is always invisible“).
With the support of the Kunststiftung NRW, a publication will be published subsequent to the exhibition.
Rune Mields (*1935, Münster) began her artistic career in the late 1960s and is one of the most important contemporary artists in Germany. In 1968 she co-founded the Kunstverein Center for Contemporary Art - Oncoming Traffic in Aachen. In 1977 she participated in the documenta 6 in Kassel and received a guest professorship in 1984 at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. In 1989 she was guest of honor at the Villa Massimo in Rome. Her works are i. a. represented in the collections of the Ludwig Museum, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Landesmuseum Mainz, and the Nationalgalerie Berlin. She received i. a. the Harry Graf Kessler Prize, the Culture Prize Cologne, the Gabriele Münter Prize and most recently the Zonta Cologne Art Award 2016. She lives and works in Cologne.
