Annette Sauermann at Vera Engelhorn - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

The medium is the message of these dozen subtly attractive wall reliefs and plastic arts by the 36-year-old emerging German artist Annette Sauermann. Following an eight-year apprenticeship in art and design at the University of Aachen upon Germany's border with Belgium and Holland, Sauermann has since 1989 been exhibiting for the most part installations in all three countries. Her first fresh York show, however, displayed her originality in softening Minimalist statuary by casting rigid geometric forms in fragile paper. The wrinkled, smudg messy paper surfaces take upon a painterly sensuousness. Other constructions, integrating Japanese design uncompounded bodys like rice paper and water, are imbued with an unusual delicacy.

The juxtaposition of feather-weight paper makes with hard, durable materials like mortar and steel generates the tension in Sauermann's works, which quietly examine the esthetics of weft A number of small, framed reliefs layer diaphanous rice paper veils above oblongs of scratchy cement-coated cardboard. As a introduction to Sauermann's larger, more compelling plastic arts they establish her dialectic between paper and congeal and her limited, neutral palette.

All the pieces shown were execut this year and, in keeping with their ritual understated presence, were untitled. frequently Sauermann's inspiration is a ground industrial object which she replicates in multiple cast paper forms. A wall relief compos of horizontally laid white bars, each approximately 5 feet lengthy actually stacks six trompe-l'oeil forms of cast white industrial paper above a junk plastic tube. In places the layered paper is thick and opaque as plaster, in other blots sheer as old muslin. Like Robert Ryman's paintings, Sauermann's white paper holds changing color from cold gray tones to beige to spoiled golden and dim orange. The surface is a blank and also as lush as a decaying fresco

In a large all-black floor piece, seven water-filled zinc long trays alternate with seven cast paper bars. The opposition of materials is initially perplexing - the luminous water gazes like glass, the matte black paper like painted lumber. Ultimately the piece heightens our awareness of the varying powers of materials to absorb or mirror light.

A somber majesty encloses Sauermann's finest sculpture, suggesting a mysterious, barred gate. For columns there are two approximately 5-foot high stacks of thicken tiles spaced about 6 1/2 feet apart. Slung between them are strips of polished immaculate rice paper. The hard-edged 1 3/4-inch-thick pebble-studd tiles actually pap up from an Aachen sidewalk), anchoring the light, lambent paper strips, create a whole that's a sensual synthesis of its parts.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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