News
Arcoiris - Now On View
"Arcoiris" is an installation made of bones and watercolors. Arcoiris, Spanish for "rainbow", literally translated as "seeing the arc in the eye", is Amelie Russana's second exhibition in her studio in Heidelberg in 2023. The exhibition is currently under construction and is expected to open at the end of June. The drawing from the last exhibition "The Artist's Night Dream was of Soft Blackness" can still be seen on the walls.
Note: The bones were donated by Metzgerei Unger in Heidelberg. No animal died specifically for this work. The bones are by-products of the sale, which would have been disposed of without this work.
Opening of new solo exhibition
"THE ARTIST NIGHTDREAM, was of soft Blackness"
March 18 to April 09
Due to the fragility of the works, you can visit the exhibition at any time by appointment at amelierussana@gmail.com.
Upcoming Show
"THE ARTIST NIGHTDREAM, was of soft Blackness"
"I continued working in the studio. The images that overwhelmed me, to which I had to surrender, revealed the soñadoras (the dreamers). The soñadora appears again and again. More and more. And now?
They haven't left me behind, they haven't kept me at a distance. From time to time the works want to keep the artist away, but not her. They have taken me with them and shared with me what they have preserved with so much mystery, so much seduction and intact innocence. They shared their dream with me. Yes, their shared dream.
A deep black dream full of warmth: the universe being born, the sap of life flowing through stars, time and jungles, a pregnant woman accompanied by fireflies, the dancing galaxies and a snake slithering through the curtains of bones.
And like Cinderella, when 5 o'clock strikes in the evening, I stop drawing the dream. I put on the artist's mask and sit between the arms of the dream. The process is repeated daily. It amazes me how everything seems simple without my summoning and step by step I merge with the dream.
Only to realize that the soñadoras did not lead me to their dream, but that it was actually always the artist's dream, that it was my dream that I have been drawing for the last few months. And the grip of cold fear grips me, because I know that the opening of vulnerability to the viewer will perhaps be more than I can bear. Here I am naked and vulnerable, ready to explode or disappear. We shall see."
Amelie Russana
Studio work between visions and painting
After Bergamo, I felt the strong urge and heard this call in my head "paint, paint, next paint, paint, ... paint on paper ... paint on paper". So it was obvious to follow this call and concentrate on the large watercolor paintings. The paintings draw me in. They surround me. Suddenly everything flowed out of me, as if it had just been waiting to finally burst. Painting and thinking about painting and the call became a liberating process.
The paintings and drawings emerged. The element of a dreaming, sensual woman becomes more and more dominant, slipping into every drawing unplanned. As if everything I touch becomes transparent, delicate skin. I follow this dominance, concentrating on this luminous warmth. It is joined by the presence of the eternal dark night.
So my hands began to connect and interweave the sensual dreaming women with the deep darkness of a blue and the symbols of the night, the moon and the stars.
Family altar on the Dia de Muertos
" This year I wanted to give the viewer the opportunity to look at our annual family altar to better understand the source from which my work draws. For many, what I say artistically and the assertion behind it is unimaginable. For me and my family, it is something special and commonplace at the same time." A.R.
Amelie Russana dedicates an artistic work to the spiritual world every year in appreciation of the collaboration. This year, she has decided to exhibit the family altar in public. The altar, which is usually set up in private rooms, will be on public display for Dia de Muertos. Amelie Russana and the spiritual world communicate with each other in the form of images and visions. Her artistic works emerge from these visions.
What is Dia de Muertos?
The Mexican Dia de Muertos is celebrated on the night of October 31st to November 1st. It is the only night of the year when the boundary between the living and the spiritual world dissolves and the deceased can visit their loved ones. It is a joyful, contemplative and colorful festival and is celebrated together in a large group.
The families build an altar so that the deceased can find their way to their families and not go astray. The pictures of the deceased are placed on the altar. Food and drinks are provided. Toys and personal items are placed on the altar, as well as a Christian symbol. The colorful Papel Picado and the student flower "Cempasuchil" are a must.
Who are the people on the altar?
Grandpa Adi, the baker from Steingasse. He was a taciturn man who didn't say much about himself and was a baker in this street, right next door, for almost 30 years.
Kurt and Sigrid: Sigrid was a passionate botanist. She traveled to Bolivia and Ecuador to find orchids. With a jeep and a little knowledge of Spanish, she drove through the jungle and discovered many unknown species. These orchids are still in the local botanical garden today. Kurt and his family have lived in Heidelberg for a long time. His family built the Schlossbergbahn and he ran several quarries in the region, including in Dossenheim. He was a very patient and kind person.
Aunt Mi (Maria) fled from Königsberg to Heidelberg with her sister's family during the Second World War to escape the Russians. Shortly before the war began, she married the love of her life, Viktor. They were only married for three weeks. Then Viktor had to go to war, from which he never returned.
Abuelo Fidel had to learn very early on what it meant to be on his own. His parents died when he was seven. His little sister died shortly afterwards after eating soil. His uncle in Veracruz doesn't want him. He is alone in the world and has to fend for himself as a street kid in Mexico City. He succeeds. He lives a very poor but hard-working and honest life. He enables his five children to go to university. He built the house in which the family lives himself. During storms, all family members have to hold on to the corrugated iron roof to prevent it from flying away.
"Tita" Ofelia was a strong, spirited and passionate Mexican woman. She went her own way and didn't let anything get in her way. She earned her own money, married twice and loved to travel. She was a loving grandmother.
Tito, actually Ignacio, was Ophelia's second husband. They met while dancing. He was a car mechanic and had a small workshop in the Colonia (district).
Little is known about Jorge, much only came out after his death. He was Ophelia's first husband, who had left the family at an early age. He was only allowed to resume contact with his daughter after Ophelia's death. When father and daughter meet again, she is already in her mid-fifties.
The altar can be seen from 25.10. to 06.11.2022.
The Rhein Neckar newspaper reports on BERGAMO
When dahlias become stalks of bone
Amelie Russana deals with the horror of the pandemic in her impressive exhibition "Bergamo 1"
RNZ article from 20.07.2022 by Mr. Moritz Mayer
Bergamo in spring 2020: a convoy of military vehicles leaves the city. Loaded with wooden coffins, on the way to a crematorium that is still empty. Images that are etched in our memories. It was the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe, and nobody knew what the world would look like in a few weeks' time. It was this moment that made everything go black for Amelie Russana. "The space from which I usually draw artistically was dark. I saw nothing - it was as if all my senses had been robbed." She is now trying to process this experience in an exhibition. Russana calls her work in Steingasse in Heidelberg "Bergamo 1". The work is 11.20 meters long and almost two meters high.
"Little by little, dots appeared and the darkness of the room began to crack," Russana tries to explain. She wants to take the viewer as close as possible. To where she herself was when she came up with the idea for "Bergamo". Listening to her speak, one could assume that after the darkness comes a Big Bang - a new Big Bang. But that would stand for new life. So is there hope in the darkness?
The canvases are all in shades of blue and show dahlia blossoms on a warm night. For Russana, her painting is poetry, which you can sense as you pass by. Is the darkness of the blue-colored night now over? No, there's something wrong ... The flowers are already fading. The foliage is completely missing, the flowers look more like spider legs and less like dahlias. As your gaze wanders over the painting, the flower stems turn into something bony. It looks as if they are human bones and joints, the realization hits you. There goes the beautiful night walk!
"I experienced the brutality of the encounter and felt the urgency that the pandemic is more than just facts and figures," Amelie Russana reflects.
Like waves of infection, the bone stalks of the dahlia blossoms are now piling up - and taking everything with them. Even the person looking at the work. It is like walking past a field of ruins of human remains. But the battle has already been fought and lost. Helplessness flows into a river of deep sadness. The work literally sucks you in - and yet it is possible to walk past the canvas. Paradoxically, the only thing alive is yourself. It is important to be aware of this. Hey, I myself am not the victim of this painting - it's not my bones that can be seen there. And yet they are the human remains of those who did not leave Bergamo alive.
Where is the seed of the dahlias in Russana's painting? It can't all be over. But nothing more is coming. This certainty sets in at the end of the tour. There will be no new sprouts. There was no new big bang, as hoped for at the beginning. There was just a bang and then - nothing. You are lonely in the night. The painting only shows dead flower bodies and at the end the great nothingness.
Amelie Russana refers to her current work as a way of expressing things that have not yet been formulated. She wants to "leave traces" and these can be impressively traced in the exhibition. So strong that when you leave the exhibition, the room seems even darker than before. Even more frightening. It almost makes you shudder to look back again. But it will be worth it, because Amelie Russana makes a promise about the absolute state of death: "There will be 'Bergamo 2' - the twin painting - from the end of July and there will be significantly more light on the canvas."
CURRENT SOLO SHOW
"BERGAMO"
01.06.-11.09.2022
WED-FRI 12-2 PM & 3-6 PM
SAT-SUN 11 a.m.-2 p.m. & 3-6 p.m
Painting exhibition at Steingasse 10 in 69117 Heidelberg
"Sneak Peak"
Newsletter in May
It's done!
The paintings are done!
Exclusively for you here is a first insight. The twins are just waiting to be hanged. The viewer can soon begin to experience what was shown to me two years ago.
"Ukraine, Corona and how I found Bergamo"
Newsletters in March
March was a difficult month in the studio. First, a corona disease interrupted the work for two weeks. Then the war in Ukraine began and while I had to concentrate on the disaster of the corona pandemic, the push messages came to my cell phone every twenty minutes. war in Europe. For a week, the studio became an interim storage facility for relief supplies that had to be taken to the Ukraine. The artistic work lay fallow. I only took in the time between adrenaline rushes and numbness.
And despite all that, I finished the first twin. The canvases for the second twin were prepared and on April 1st I was able to paint the first line of the second twin. And while the world outside was very close at first and took over the studio: the virus, the war, the permanently lit mobile phone, it became very quiet after this shock wave. This silence brought me back to my white space and I was shown a lot. Almost everything is recorded in sketches. Again much that needs to be painted and created.
However, the focus must remain on Bergamo for now because that is what needs to be shown next. That's why I typed an excerpt from my diary about how Bergamo was shown to me for the first time.
"I took myself to my room. Everything is black. I can only see myself. No top, no bottom. Then I said: Show me what Bergamo means. A field of dahlias came towards me. A large field. At first sight it looks beautiful at night. Magical. Those big flowers and the blue night. Only then do I notice that almost everything has dried up and the flowers have broken off. A field between blooming and death. In between. Something flickers between the flowers. "I can't see it. It flashes violently in front of my eyes. I can't resolve it. For days I see this flash between the flowers. Then I pull it apart and a new picture of Bergamo emerges. Large and small, thick and thin, fully blooming dahlias float past me. I have to think of the Styx. These are the ones that have gone and the first image of the withered field is here and now. The work can begin."
"BERGAMO- The painting of the pandemic"
Newsletter in February
"I want the painting to have a very seductive and "beautiful" effect on the viewer at first glance. It should suggest itself as innocent. Only at second glance, which then invites you to delve deeper into the painting, should it emerge that it is this is an empty field full of dying people and bones."
Amelie Russana
"2022 BERGAMO- The painting of the pandemic"
Newsletter in January
"It is my wish to remind you that I have always believed and still believe that an artist who lives and deals with spiritual values, in the face of a conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilization involved, cannot behave indifferently.”
(Pablo Picasso on Guernica in December 1937)
Destroyed human lives and families, never-ending grief and loneliness. No one will ever forget the convoys of military trucks that brought the dead out of the city of Bergamo. A loving and dignified farewell was not possible in the hour of death. I dedicate Bergamo, as a requiem to all the people who died and were buried in solitude as a result of the pandemic.
Bergamo is my first work in the third year of the pandemic and will be shown in May 2022. The painting will take up the entire space. You will hardly be able to move in it. Each of the two twin paintings will consist of eight canvases. They show a field of dahlias at night. I have known these pictures since 2020 and will now paint them in February. The light returns, still barely perceptible but still full of tenderness and hope.
"Year in Review 2021 - The Year of the White Room"
December newsletter
“My work is based on investigating what I find in white space. I give a body to the invisible. This is my job as an artist." Amelie Russana
When I was a student, I painted my studio space with white wall paint, the tables, chairs and myself too. Everything should disappear in this white, until only the paintings and sculptures that have developed out of the white were visible.
The studio in Heidelberg, which I was able to open in 2021, gives me the opportunity to penetrate this white space even further in order to work even more precisely and formulate even clearer works. "The Hunter" was shown for the first time during the renovation work and the second corona wave, then the studio for viewers was officially opened with the work "The night has twelve hours". This was the first time paintings were shown that were created in the pandemic year 2020. With the installation "Leviathan" this year is coming to an end. Certainly "Leviathan" was the work that gave the viewer the clearest access to the white space.
My artistic work in 2021 was funded with two grants from the state of Baden-Württemberg.
I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
The next exhibitions in 2022 will take you even deeper into the white space.
"LEVIATHAN"
Newsletters in November
“I was collecting bones and leaves from a river that emptied into the sea when a huge shimmering mountain slid past me. It sparkled and glowed. There was no end, not up into the sky and not towards the horizon. It was wonderful. It wasn't a mountain though, it was a fish, a giant and because I had never seen anything like it I only knew one word for it from an old story: Leviathan
Not being able to bring him here, I did what I could and brought only a piece of his skin."
"Berthold Brecht and -The night has twelve hours-"
Newsletter in September 2021
“We are all in the night right now. The night is the pandemic and we cannot change that. Death, darkness and the routine of constant threats are part of everyday life for all of us. In order to choose a suitable title for the exhibition, I chose the sentence from Bertolt Brecht's poem - The Song of the Moldau - from 1944. He wrote it during the war and it has this memorable sentence "The night has twelve hours, then the day will come". What is existential for the paintings and this poem is the current state and at the same time the promise of the day, of change. So to the change, to the promise that every horror can transform itself again. Life finds a way. The paintings born in the pandemic contain the darkness but also the promise of light. We are, so to speak, in the blue hour of the night ”
"The night has twelve hours-"
Newsletter in August 2021
"Corona wiped out the people in my paintings. After that, there was only blackness on the painting supports. Bit by bit, this turned into the blackness of the night. Then, very slowly, the light came and the night began to dress in blue. In Dahlias started to grow in this midnight blue. When and if the day will come is uncertain.......But that's ok with me."