Anna Nero and Bernhard Adams in conversation with Ruth Polleit Riechert
Works by Anna Nero and Bernhard Adams were exhibited in both the IDENTITY show of the Frankfurt Jewish Community and published in Germany’s leading business magazine, WirtschaftsWoche in 2020. An interesting range in a special year. Ruth Polleit Riechert spoke with both artists.
RPR: Anna Nero, a lot has happened for you since our Artist Talk at Opelvillen in summer 2018. In addition to a few solo shows, you’ve also participated in a group exhibition at various museums. A large work of yours was featured in the exhibition IDENTITY at the Jewish Community Frankfurt — a show that you helped to inspire. What does identity mean to you personally?
AN: Identity is not a solid mass, but rather a layer cake of many levels — I am an artist, a migrant, a Jew, a Russian, a German passport holder, a feminist, the list is quite long. The expression of these different facets is not set in stone. Sometimes one stands out more, sometimes the other. But I can say that the older I get, the more important my Jewish identity becomes. Maybe that’s a defiant reaction to the current anti-Semitism. Or it comes from the fact that my partner is also Jewish.
RPR: You were born in Moscow and grew up in Germany. Some of your family members are also artists. What influence does your family history have on your work?
AN: The migration experience had a great influence on my family and my biography. However, I don’t work much biographically in my work. The fact that both my parents and my grandmother are artists certainly had an influence on my career choice. My father was retrained as a graphic designer in Germany and taught me Photoshop very early on. That had a big influence, at least aesthetically, on my later painterly work.
RPR: In what way does or did Photoshop influence your painting?
AN: I don’t pre-plan my works on the computer. But by building them layer by layer and using lots of gradients and shiny surfaces, they sometimes take on a digital aesthetic. My father is a commercial artist, so I used to spend a lot of time with the computer. That influenced me subconsciously.
The large-format work we chose for the IDENTITY exhibition, which was also featured in the last issue of WirtschaftsWoche, is titled “Big Book.” The titles of your paintings usually complement the statement of the work in a humorous and interesting way. How did this picture and this title come about? What role did the theme of identity play?
I never work on a concrete theme. That is also rather difficult in painting, because it quickly comes across as illustrative. Over the years, I’ve developed certain processes and a repertoire of forms that help me generate images. My work is about possibilities of illustration, about painting itself, and about the life of things. The titles are often witty and ironic, meant to suggest a space of association for the viewer.
RPR: Since last year, you also have a teaching position at the Mainz Art Academy. How do the art students work today in comparison with your way of working? What’s next for you and what will we see next from you?
I had a teaching assignment at the Kunsthochschule Mainz in the winter semester of 2019. My students were in their first and second semesters, so they were brand new to art studies. That’s an exciting phase because sometimes there are big leaps in learning in a short period of time. I didn’t notice any big differences from my own time at the Kunsthochschule Mainz, I was a student there myself 10 years ago. This week I’m giving a lecture on abstract painting at the Alanus Hochschule and in December at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel. I enjoy working with students and will continue on this path.
In 2021, there will be an exhibition with my mother and grandmother at Schulstrasse 1 A in Frankfurt, a double exhibition with my friend Ellen Akimoto in Bremen and a solo exhibition at the Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig.
RPR: Bernhard Adams, a lot has happened for you in 2020. The most important is certainly the commission for the design of a church window. What influence does this work have on your work, both in terms of content and design?
BA: Unfortunately, I can’t reveal more details yet, because the project is still in development. However, I can say that I have never been allowed to face a bigger task. I spent the first Corona Lockdown doing hundreds of hours of research, and my summer vacation was a 6,000 km car trip to the great cathedrals of Europe to see all the important artists’ windows.
This wealth of impressions has had a fundamental impact on me, enriched my work immensely and led to many prototypes in my studio. Among other things, I am experimenting with printed foils that are attached to the window. The window is an incredibly exciting place for art, because it forms the membrane between private and public space. That’s why I’m experimenting with art made of glass in various forms, for windows or walls. Apart from that, I have a soft spot for works whose appearance changes greatly with the light and thus the day, which is why I often use metallic colors in my canvas paintings.
RPR: You have already had the experience of working with large surfaces and artworks in public spaces as a master student of Katharina Grosse. The design of the exterior facade of the Ignatz Bubis Community Center in Frankfurt was another step for you this year. How did you approach this task?
The conception of my work “Kristall” took more courage from me than any other project before it. When I was in Berlin for a few days in 2012 before I started my studies in Düsseldorf, I went to see the Liebeskind Building of the Jewish Museum. That was the first time in my life that architecture touched me: Consternation, sadness, loss, anger, hope, the horror of the Holocaust became vivid for me and inspired me to take a series of photographs. I never showed the photos, but when I was invited to the exhibition they immediately came back to me. I took this experience and the photos from Berlin as a starting point for a digital painting that I had printed on window film.
The 40-square-meter window joins the symbols that can already be seen on the left and right sides of the facade of the community center on Savignystraße. “Crystal” is framed by a huge broken wall in the shape of a tablet of the law and three menoral chandeliers mimicking roof beams on the other side.
My work shines outward ambivalently in this field of tension, both architecturally and in terms of content.
RPR: In terms of materials, you have worked both with classical formats such as glass and with completely new innovative application surfaces such as plastic film. Do you see your works primarily in public spaces or also in the private sphere?
BA: I always see my works in their context. Since July, for example, a short video clip showing the creation process of one of my works can be seen on advertising screens all over Germany. I can imagine my works everywhere. In the museum, above the couch, online, in church, on the street, in the next Moonmuseum or maybe soon in a department store. I would never exclude something before I know the conditions. Art is possible everywhere.
RPR: What are your plans for 2021?
BA: As an artist, since the Corona pandemic, you can consider yourself even luckier if you have the opportunity to work at all. I will continue and hope to continue to be involved in such exciting projects. A packed vernissage is probably one of the wishes for 2022.
Contact Dr Ruth Polleit Riechert for further questions at:
contact@rpr-art.com
www.rpr-art.com
