September 27th – October 23rd 2007

Opening reception:
Thursday, September 27th - 6-8 pm

Michael Steinberg Fine Art
526 West 26th street
Suite 215
New York, NY 10001
T: 212.924.5770

“Paris in my mind”

“Everybody carries a different city inside. One loves to visit cafés and restaurants, some vistit Gothic churches, some are interested in a love affair, others come here for a conference. So many people, so many cities. I am interested as well in the correspondence of the level of former times of the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, overlayering with my - todays level. Each of us is dealing with the idea of “paining” but from different perspectives and media.” (Birgit Ramsauer 2007).

When she awarded in 2002 a scholarship at the ‘Kuenstlerhaeuser Worpswede” she became familiar with the work of Paula Modersohn-Becker, an important painter a century ago, born in Bremen. On the steps of this exciting painter two years later Birgit visited Paris. The intense diary of Paula became Birgit Ramsauer’s guidance in Paris. For Paula the time in Paris was her most shaping period of time.

The Polaroid pictures on Duratrans material in lightboxes bring in the Mediterranean light of Paris. They seem to be a window view into the city. By enlarging the original image the “painterly strokes” grow more powerful.

The technic;

Since Birgit Ramsauer’s scholarship in 1998 in Moscow of Kolodzei Foundation, USA she experiments in the media of Polaroids. During the three minute developing process of the picture with a stump pencil she scratches onto the surface of the Polaroid. Therefor she stops  the developing process of the picture at this level.

In Paris, right at the locations of Paula’s diary Birgit Ramsauer works with the Polaroid.

“Within the noise of the floating city, surrounded by the smell, the movement of the environment and the people I work into the developing Polaroid: leaning at a post or cowering on a bench my work process is vulnerably open to the public view. That for I correspond in this first step of a public performance with the environment.

The strong “strokes” and the colourful transformation connect me with the locations of the paintings of Paula 100 years ago. The layers of time overlap. In the second step I scan and work on the computer. In the technic of new media I “paint plain air”. ….

The show will be presented as well in Staedtische Galerie Bremen (2^nd of December 2007 till 15^th if January 2008) and at Frauenmuseum Bonn (1stof December 2007 till 27^th of February 2008).

The book:

Together with the Bremen writer Angelika Sinn she edited a book on this tour to Paris called “Himmelssuechtig- auf den Spuren Paula Modersohn-Beckers in Paris”, “Sky addicted –with Paula Modersohn-Becker in Paris”. Publisher Kellner Bremen/Boston 2007.