CAROLA DEWOR | THE PLACE WITHIN
“It is these open stories that always relate to my own history, my own time.
I want to make time, past and present, their atmospheric and psychological connections visible in my painting. The depiction of interiors in all their manifestations offers me the sensual – visual vocabulary with which I can say everything.” – Carola Dewor
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Painter Carola Dewor’s artistic ability lies in her empathy and extraordinary sense of color, which encompasses the most delicate nuances. With these skills, She finds the power of concentration through her unique point of view on the world, expressed in her painting. Her interiors are about people; although they are not visible, they are represented by the space itself and the things in it.
Acrylic on Canvas, 180 x 130 cm
“I remember one of the first pictures I consciously painted as a child; it showed in perspective drawing the table in our living room. I have always been fascinated by things, and the space that accommodates me, that gives me security and privacy as a pictorial motif. The essence of the inhabitants is revealed in the rooms they live in and in the relationship they develop over time with the furniture and utensils. Rooms tell the stories of the people who live or have lived in them; it is their traces and signs in which they remain present.” – Carola Dewor
The first series of interiors was created while she was still studying in Berlin in the early 80s. At that time, it was the onset of the very successful era of the so-called “Neue Wilde” (New Wild Ones), who had oriented themselves on the painting of the German Expressionists and whose raw style fitted well to life in the big city at that time, and which suited Carola Dewor’s conception of painting.
A unique feature of her art is the depiction of light, which adds atmosphere to the space and supports an illusionistic perspective.
It creates spatial depth through optical illusions on the flat surface, from which the question always arises: What is real?
Interior has a tradition in the history of art. The Fauve, Matisse, Bonnard, and Vuillard, but also painters as diverse as David Hockney and the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, have created works of this genre. The theme of the interior affects everyone, no matter what culture they belong to, because a room, in all its manifestations, is involuntarily linked to existential, psychological, cultural, and historical themes.
“In painting lies my aesthetic approach to the world, which touches me and connects me with it, and I wish that the viewers are equally touched by my paintings.” – Carola Dewor
The artist finds inspiration in her own photographs and in photographs she encounters during her research on the world wide web. Their selection is purely subjective, her motifs do not represent any particular place, but they seem universal. Usually, it is intense moods of light and color or the effect of an extraordinary view of a room that sets the artist’s empathy and imagination in motion and forms the basis for new work. The photographs of the rooms are reformulated into independent interpretations through reduction and change during the painting process.
Beyond the subject matter, the painting medium has a special significance for Carola Dewor, because every brushstroke and stain leaves a physical, concrete trace whose autonomy can also be viewed separately from the content of the picture and yet brings it forth at the same time. Furthermore, through the use of finely tuned nuances, contrasts, and weightings, the painter succeeds in making her view of the world visible in the paintings. Bringing out both the motif and the painting itself is a tightrope walk and a challenge that she repeatedly faces throughout the workflow, making the painting so unique for her.
Carola Dewor graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts in 1986 as a master’s student of Prof. K. Fußmann. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including Museo de Arte Contemporânea and SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil; California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles; Kunsthalle Tübingen, and Gallery Siki, Saint Louis, Senegal. In addition, her works are in private and public collections. This year she successfully exhibited her works at the Discovery Art Fair Cologne.
