Lazybones

17/11 – 29/01/2022 Natalia Hug Gallery, Cologne, Germany

Lazybones

-When will the others arrive?
-What others?
-The ones that take the place.
-They have yet to come ; The other parts
-What is this body?
-I am indifferent to any movement 

Standing alone, they appear to be whole. Together, they seem to be awaiting their wholeness.
They, that are the paintings showing both sides.

Embodying an idea which has yet to come. Inhabiting the space as a strategy.
They seem to align and stand together in order to address their own formality, their spatial approaches.

Here, they become an exploration, a reflection, something that is the other, something that is a process not limited to painting but of layers of painting, its centers, its borders, its limitations. 

The gallery becomes a vast open field, showing relations, asking for reactions, abstracting the abstract, where the paintings are asking about themselves, dissolving representation by making them present. They, the paintings, are awaiting each other on both sides. 

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Taking inspiration from Cologne’s medieval town center with its Cathedral and twelve Romanesque churches as a globally recognized landmark, Lazybones uses the motif of “Frau Welt” as an orientation to the meanings of form in intellectual and artistic creation. The allegorical figure, occurring frequently in medieval literature, can be seen as a reference of contrasting sides: Seen from the front she is beautiful; when she turns round, her back is a mass of decay, maggots and creatures. For Lazybones, Ziemele uses the figure’s omniscient smile as a point of reference for her workgroup of abstract paintings. The shapes are spread around the gallery space, hiding in corners or conforming to the walls. Ziemeles “Frau Welt” features brightly colored parts of organs and creatures, revealing the layered architecture of her body and inner form. Changing their appearance, the repulsive back seems to create a certain relation to the soft shapes of her paintings in Lazybones.Within the process of abstraction, the artist changes original materiality and characteristics: One can, in direct confrontation with the paintings and in correlation to the harsh image of “Frau Welt”, see how objects react to one another due to their figurative physicality, moving between representation and abstraction.

Text: Marlene A.Schenk
Photos: Simon Vogel