Fließende Wesen
Kallmann-Preis 2022
November 5, 2022 - February 26, 2023 (extended)
Kallmann-Museum Ismaning, Munich
Berlin-based artist Aneta Kajzer (born 1989) has been awarded the 2022 Kallmann Prize for her exploration of the theme of “portraiture.” This is the first time that a painterly approach has been honored with the prize. Kajzer's color-intensive paintings oscillate between figuration and abstraction. They are at once free, gestural paintings of beguiling sensuality, yet always allow us to recognize representational elements such as people or animals. Her works will be presented in a solo exhibition at the Kallmann-Museum from November 5, 2022, to January 29, 2023.
In Kajzer's paintings, we see faces and bodies, or just individual elements of them, such as eyes, a nose, a mouth, hair, or a hand. But what we see is elusive; the faces remain contourless, dissolving and blurring into the pure, dynamic painting on the canvases. Sometimes it is not even possible to decide whether they are human or animal. This openness corresponds to the painterly process in which Aneta Kajzer develops her paintings. Starting with decisions about colors and the format of the canvas, she reaches points during the painting process where the first signs of figurativeness appear, which she picks up on and pursues. This can result in individual faces that fill the entire picture surface, or constellations of heads and figures. Sometimes the figures appear sad, loving, or sympathetic, then again grotesque or comical, sometimes cute and harmless, then again eerie, or they even remind us of familiar faces. Although the titles Kajzer gives her paintings may guide our gaze, they do not define a specific message.
Aneta Kajzer's paintings do not depict specific people. Rather, they are to be understood as an exploration of painting itself and appear as projection surfaces for our own associations and feelings. In the field of tension between figuration and non-representationalism, Kajzer creates intense images in which our gaze can lose itself in the sensual colors and which, at the same time, express fundamental characteristics of human existence.
Aneta Kajzer
Aneta Kajzer was born in Katowice in 1989. She studied at the Mainz Academy of Fine Arts. In 2017, she received the Winsor & Newton Painting Scholarship, which enabled her to spend six months working at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien. In 2018, she participated in the Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt, a professional development program for female visual artists. In 2019, she received the Stiftung Kunstfonds working scholarship and spent three months in South Korea at the MMCA Goyang. Her works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad, including the major group exhibition “Jetzt! Junge Malerei in Deutschland” (Now! Painting in Germany Today) at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Museum Wiesbaden, the Kunstsammlung Chemnitz, and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Aneta Kajzer lives and works in Berlin.
Jury Kallmann Prize 2022
Dr. Monika Bayer-Wermuth, Curator, Museum Brandhorst
Dr. Patricia Drück, Curator, Kunstraum München
Maya Heckelmann, Director, Künstlerhaus Marktoberdorf
Rasmus Kleine, Director, Kallmann Museum
Dr. Benita Meißner, Managing Director and Curator, DG Kunstraum Diskurs Gegenwart
Michael Sedlmair, Chairman, Prof. Hans Jürgen Kallmann Foundation
Lena von Goedeke, Kallmann Prize winner 2020
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