BERLIN.- The painter Mona Ardeleanu (*1984) and the photographer Alfred Ehrhardt (1901–1984) are two German artists posited together for this exhibition, notwithstanding their differing generations and mediums. Whilst Ardeleanu’s painted objects combine fabric and geometry in unique ways and oscillate between abstraction and realism, Ehrhardt’s avant-garde black-and-white photographs from the 1940’s display high-contrast close-ups of natural objects. Both practices share comparable compositions and a serial, conceptual approach; nonetheless their unifying factor is the separation of the object from its background. This intensifies the focus on the represented structure, yet it also renders the object as somewhat lost – appearing like an aimless entity in an empty room.

When viewing the patterns and fabrics in Ardeleanu’s paintings, it appears as if we are looking at something familiar; however the structures are disrupted, so that nothing specific is actually identifiable. The arrangements are not based on a reference; they are created on the canvas during the painting process and Ardeleanu paints these on a monochrome background so that amorphous figures of intense materiality and spatiality appear. This is also the case in Ehrhardt’s photographs of shells, snails and corals. Over a period of years he documented a wide variety of creatures and crystals, all photographed in front of a black background. Due to the object-background separation, geometric forms also arise in the images.

However what exactly do these objects – set in their uniform focus – tell us? Whilst Ehrhardt titled his photographs with the exact animal and species, Ardeleanu’s titles (i.e. Circuit, Incline, Fold), remain equivocal and tend to concentrate on the form or characteristic of the object. Both artists emphasise conceptual concerns related to familiar objects, and by employing defamiliarisation and serial investigations of similar materialities and structures, these objects attain a new abstract nature.

Mona Ardeleanu (*1984) completed her undergraduate studies in Fine Arts (painting) at The Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design from 2003 to 2010. During this period she studied under Franz Ackermann in Karlsruhe (2004), and from 2008 until 2009 under Daniel Richter at The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, as well as under Karin Kneffel at The Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2009. Grants include the Baden-Württemberg University Scholarship (Landesgraduiertenstipendium) and her works are featured, amongst others, in the collections of Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, The State of Baden-Württemberg, Marta Herford and The WÜRTH collection.

Alfred Ehrhardt was born 1901 in the State of Thuringia and studied Fine Arts in Gera and Hamburg. Between 1928 and 1933 he studied at Dessau’s Bauhaus, amongst others under Oskar Schlemmer, Josef Albers as well as Wassily Kandinsky. His work, primarily his photographs on natural philosophy, is concerned with the discourse around the principles of structure and form. Ehrhardt’s oeuvre is classed as one of the influential documents of the New Objectivity movement (Neue Sachlichkeit). The Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation in Berlin has maintained Ehrhardt’s estate since his passing in 1984.