Cornelia Thomsen | Garden Urgency and Resilience

Cornelia Thomsen Garden Urgency and Resilience

Cornelia Thomsen Garden Urgency and Resilience

Cornelia Thomsen Garden Urgency and Resilience

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Foreword Paintings Curriculum Vitae

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Foreword

Cornelia Thomsen Garden—Urgency and Resilience Cornelia Thomsen’s practice, ranging over media that

soon see that they disguise an urgent private project.

include pen and ink, watercolor, and oil, insistently re-

The watercolor forms coalesce, disperse, and merge

flects on an upbringing in former East Germany, her

again without ever fully opening a window into depth,

home for the first twenty years of her life. The surveil-

expressive of an unresolved inward struggle for mean-

lance state—so memorably evoked in the film Das Leben

ing. They challenge us as viewers to follow the artist in

der Anderen (The Lives of Others)—created an atmo-

taking nothing for granted, to look beyond the seem-

sphere of gnawing unpredictability that caused its citi-

ingly closed curtain formed by these compositions and

zens to flinch from active participation in public life and

explore them as interrogations of hue, order, space, and

to self-censor as a means of self-preservation, seeking

pattern: metaphors, perhaps, for a spirit of uneasy resil-

value in private interests and pursuits. Thomsen and her

ience.

family experienced material and psychological hardship, yet the Communist system paradoxically also of-

Joe Earle

fered her the opportunity to acquire practical skills she

Independent Curator

would later deploy as a tool for exploring a troubled past.

Thomsen received a rigorous four-year apprenticeship in painting at the world-famous Meissen Porcelain Company before moving west to the Frankfurt area after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She graduated from the University of Art and Design in Offenbach and finally settled in New York in 2006. Thomsen started work on Garden— her first major series—in 2005, when she was taking her first steps on a journey away from artisanal representation toward the fully realized abstraction seen in much of her later work. Sparked by an interest in botanical study dating from those Meissen years, each of the Garden paintings traverses the tonal range of a single color, or at most two different basic colors, applied in arrays of soft brushstrokes with no outlines.

These skillful marks, the products of years of training, at first remind us of the meticulous pages of a plant-hunter’s album, perhaps depicting hanging willow fronds, standing grasses or irises, or fallen autumn leaves. But look more closely at Thomsen’s seemingly carefree, almost decorative assemblages of paint and you will

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Garden Nr. 091 , 2018 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 16 × 12½ in. (40.5 × 32.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 040 , 2006 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 16 × 12½ in. (40.5 × 32.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 041 , 2006 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 16 × 12½ in. (40.5 × 32.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 114 , 2021 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 17 × 12¾ in. (43.0 × 32.5 cm)

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Garden Nr. 117 , 2021 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 20 × 15 in. (51.0 × 38.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 121 , 2021 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 20 × 15 in. (51.0 × 38.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 118 , 2021 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 20 × 15 in. (51.0 × 38.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 119 , 2021 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 20 × 15 in. (51.0 × 38.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 115 , 2021 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 20 × 15 in. (51.0 × 38.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 102 , 2018 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 15½ × 11½ in. (39.5 × 29.0 cm).

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Garden Nr. 095 , 2018 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 17 × 12¾ in. (43.0 × 32.5 cm)

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Garden Nr. 111 , 2018 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 17 × 12¾ in. (43.0 × 32.5 cm)

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Garden , 2005 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 15½ × 11½ in. (39.5 × 29.5 cm)

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Garden Nr. 107 , 2020 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 40 × 30 in. (101.5 × 76.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 108 , 2020 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 40 × 30 in. (101.5 × 76.0 cm)

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Garden Nr. 129 , 2021 Watercolor on Canson paper Paper size 30 × 22 in. (76.0 × 56.0 cm)

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Cornelia Thomsen 1970 Born in Rudolstadt, Germany Apprenticeship at Meissen Porcelain Company, Meissen, Germany Study at the University of Art and Design, Offenbach/Main, Germany Lives and works in Manhattan

Solo Exhibitions “Cornelia Thomsen: Stripes and Structures II,” Kashima Arts, Tokyo, 2018 “Cornelia Thomsen,” Felix Ringel Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2017 “Cornelia Thomsen: Strokes,” Leslie Feely Gallery, New York, 2016 “Cornelia Thomsen: Stripes and Structures,” Kashima Arts, Tokyo, 2015 “Cornelia Thomsen: Hypocrisis, Pressures, and Ironies of Life in Communist East Germany,” German Consulate NYC, New York, 2014 “Cornelia Thomsen: Stripes and Structures,” Leslie Feely Gallery, New York, 2014 “Landscape and Abstraction: Cornelia Thomsen,” Friedrich-Froebel Museum, Bad Blankenburg, Germany, 2014 “Cornelia Thomsen: Stripe Paintings,” Erik Thomsen Gallery, New York, 2011 “Cornelia Thomsen: Nature’s Reflections,” Behnke and Doherty Gallery, Washington Depot, Connecticut, 2010 “Cornelia Thomsen: Works on Paper,” The International Art and Design Fair, New York, 2005

Group Exhibitions Felix Ringel Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany 2019 Zurich 18 Art Fair, Felix Ringel Galerie, Zürich, 2018 “CounterPointe 5,” The Actors Fund Arts Center, Brooklyn 2017 German Consulate, “Make Your Mark,” Northside Festival’s Williamsburg Walks, Brooklyn, 2016 “Testing Testing: Painting and Sculpture since 1960 from the Permanent Collection,” Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2015 “Color Fall,” William Siegal Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2014 Brooklyn Museum, stage design, collaboration with the Brooklyn Ballet, 2013 “Freie Sicht,” Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2013 “Group Show,” Leslie Feely Gallery, New York, 2012 “Retrospective,” Behnke and Doherty Gallery, Washington Depot, Connecticut, 2011 “Etchings and Prints,” Manhattan Graphics Center, New York, 2010

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“Fragile Diplomacy,” The Bard Graduate Center, New York, 2008 “Group Show,” Broome Street Gallery, New York, 2007 “Art Attack,” Frère Independent, Chelsea Hotel, New York, 2007 “Immer die schönste Malerei,” Galerie K9 aktuelle Kunst, Hannover, Germany, 2006

Public Lectures “Women, Politics, and Art,” 1014 Space for Ideas, New York, 2021 “What Remains: Art and Remembrance,” Panel Discussion, Deutsches Haus NYU, New York, 2019 “The Fall of the Berlin Wall,” seminar at CUNY Graduate Center, New York, 2019 “Imagery, Narrative, Propaganda in the German Democratic Republic,” University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2018 “Lasting Effects of the Berlin Wall on Women in Germany,” United Nations Association of New York, New York, 2018 “Frauen und Kunst in der DDR,” University of Chicago Speaker Series, Chicago, 2017 “Ghosts in the Machine, East German Culture in Unified Germany,” Goethe-Institut, New York, 2017 “Women in Art,” Austrian-German-Swiss Women-in-Business Forum, New York, 2016

Publications Cornelia Thomsen: Strokes, Leslie Feely Gallery, New York, 2016 Cornelia Thomsen: Stripes and Structures, Kashima Arts, Tokyo, 2015 Cornelia Thomsen: Stripes and Structures, Leslie Feely Gallery, New York, 2014 Cornelia Thomsen: Stripe Paintings, Erik Thomsen Gallery, New York, 2011 Cornelia Thomsen: Garden, Erik Thomsen Gallery, New York, 2011 Cornelia Thomsen: Works on Paper, The International Art and Design Fair, New York, 2005

Public Collections Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, Connecticut Friedrich Fröbel Museum, Bad Blankenburg, Germany Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona

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62 South Glenwood Street Jackson Hole, Wyoming Tel 307 733 0555 tayloepiggottgallery.com

Cover: Cornelia Thomsen, 1:1 detail from Garden Nr. 117 (p. 12)

Cornelia Thomsen

Garden Urgency and Resilience © 2022 Cornelia Thomsen Photography: Erik Thomsen Design and Production: Valentin Beinroth Printing: Colour Connection GmbH, Frankfurt am Main Printed in Germany

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