»Navel to the world«

After World War II, the white cube acquired the status of an aesthetic convention. Dagmar Varady’s studio, impressively presented in the book, though seems to be a place where art is produced and also an »exhibition space«. Rather than being viewed as completed works or paintings, her works are »permanently in motion«, as the artist emphasizes. Thus, in the studio, a personal (knowledge) order emerges in the context of art, something along the lines of »principles in chaos«, whereby guided chance (serendipity) also comes into play, which is quite evident in the structures, folds, and progressions in her series of »Brilliant-Blue« paintings. With all the breaks, deviations, intuitions, ­exceptions, and ambiguities that occur in her art, Dagmar Varady has set out on the »path of unintentionality« (Ernst Bloch) – an unintention­ality that promotes the processuality of art, but which in turn would not come about without a steady place of production, the studio. There, motifs meander from picture to picture in an indeterminate production process, enter into dialogue with one another, and undergo a ­protean transformation into ever new variants. As such, Dagmar Varady’s studio is not simply a place of work but, in the artist’s own words, her »navel to the world« and, as such, a kind of laboratory in which intrinsic processes play a significant role in determining artistic attitudes and objectives.

Exhibition:
Pamme-Vogelsang gallery, Cologne, 30/6 – 26/8/2023