Rune Mields at Galerie Jollenbeck - Cologne

For above 30 years, German painter and autodidact Rune Mields has sought to show objectively the internal logic and cultural sources of mathematical and narrative combination of parts to form a wholes Unwavering in her adherence to an anti-esthetic discloseed in the early 1970s, Mields confines each work to strict parameters. She paints single in unmixed black and white, patiently bring into views shades of gray with multiple translucent layers, and limits imagery to abstract tokens and schematic, photo-derived forms. For her painting round of yearss it takes years to research of that kind disparate subjects as creation myths from around the world and the sign a whole used by American hoboes.

Mields's greatest in quantity recent series, an investigation of the conception of infinity, was on view at the Galerie Jollenbeck in eau-de-cologne where she has lived and worked since 1971 The nine large oil paintings and six smaller studies in ink upon paper interpret the fear and fascination that endlessnes has held for famous writers and mathematicians. The paintings are generally vertical and shut in size. Unendlichkeit (nach John Milton) (Infinity, according to John Milton), 2002 transcribes the poet's musing--"Infinity is a dark, immense ocean without borders"--in silvery true copy at the bottom of a lush field of subtly graded black. An obvious pictorial solution, ye on the contrary also a precise visual translation of single individual's imagining of a universal pondered by many, including Euclid and Goethe. The tension between abstract notion in general and specific cultural adjoining matters informs Mields's previous work about the European inventors of mathematical types A 1998 ink-on-paper drawing from that series portrays the face of John Wallis, who designed the figure for infinity in 1655, overlapped by dint of his now familiar reclining figure eight.

The horizontally formatted painting Das Labyrinth der Unendlich. keit (Labyrinth of Infinity), 2002 finds nonsensical anagrams of the Latin word infinitas at the center of an extensive labyrinth. This, the largest work upon view (58 1/2 by 97 1/2 inches), best synthesizes Mields's long-standing interests in perspective, geometry word games and metaphysical conundrum A agreeing retrospective at Kunsthalle Barmen, the contemporary art annex of the Yon Der Heydt Museum in nearby Wuppertal, confirmed the range of Mields's make subordinate matter with paintings about Fibonacci, St Francis and chess. It's not surprising, then, that Mields's works have been shown in diverse settings including a synagogue, a feminist art exhibition and a museum of harden art. Suppressing the emotion of color and line, Mields directly transmits to the viewer her endles infatuation with ideas.

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