You, not me
Aline Cautis
oil on canvas
85 × 66 cm
2014
Acquisition 2014
Inv. No. 0282
“I think in terms of space, line and color, etc. For me, these things are carriers of information and language. Actually, these paintings are not abstract. […] They are fragments from many, many stories.” The pictures are neither abstract, nor figurative, rather it is much more a matter of small formats that Cautis composes into arrangements. She is interested in architecture, she stresses. Some of the paintings have been pieced together as screens or wall decorations. In this particular staging, pictures are hanging on their own. On some, from form and color-study there remains only a thickly painted frame. The painting in the evn collection is in portrait-format on a pale beige background. It stands out through its bold elegance and exuberance. Other pictures are darker, melancholic, compacter, more devastated. This picture is dominated, however, by lightness, movement and aromatic viridity. Large swaths of color in dark blue surround the inner action of the picture. The strokes appear in parallel, draw refined frazzles over the canvas, as if they were the traces of figure skaters. The dance-like element – unmistakably reminiscent of Matisse's elastic color-rhythms – is supported through the contrast with light color-bursts. They are hastily developed, spontaneously placed, a pattern equally melodic as it is sketchy and careless. Those who take the time will recognize therein not only a graceful game, but will discover motifs once and while. In the upper lefthand corner, framed by an egg-shaped contour, a female face emerges – just half, and yet one can make out the traces of hair, eyes and mouth. This remains only an indication, with the emergence of painterly negligibility. Much is reminiscent of a 1950's style, or of the quickly drawn faces with which designers supply their fashion plates. It's about the momentum, a Hellenistic ideal, weightless elegance and a countenance of color-frazzles in prefigured porcelain.
Thomas D. Trummer, 2015 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)
Continue readingPublications
evn collection. 95–2015 Jubilee, Vienna 2015, p. 86 f