Vernissage: FRI 26 September 2025 at 8:00 p.m.

Introduction: Dr Tina Simon, publicist (Leipzig)
Music: Sarah Christ (Dresden on the harp)
First day: SAT, 27 September 2025 / from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Last day: SAT 11 October / from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

 

 

Beide Künstlerinnen zeigen überwiegend neue Arbeiten, die keine engagierte Rechtfertigung brauchen. Sie sind groß, großartig, und können es sich leisten, leise zu sein, leise bis zum Unausgesprochenen und ruhig in minimalen Gesten bis zur Wirkung eines wohlplatzierten Schweigens, das die innere Ruhe gegen äußeren Lärm verteidigt; Werke, die leiser als laut sind.

"Those who are strong can afford to speak softly." It is a typical sign of communication in this day and age that a lack of conviction goes hand in hand with an excess of staged conspicuousness. What is not strong enough in terms of insight or imagination presents itself louder, shrill, bigger and more provocative.

Softer than loud – that sounds as if one could increase an effect by reducing its means. And you can! Soft tones can be surprisingly powerful and strangely sublime amid the din of wild cries. In this sense, the works of Ainara Torrano and Tina Wohlfarth assert themselves clearly, unchallenged and confidently in the contemporary art market with its superlatives and excesses. The artists operate with a strikingly quiet modesty.

Ainara Torrano explores the game of identities in a concrete, figurative manner (oil on canvas). The masquerades, role-plays, daydreams, twilight states and self-experiments of the protagonists stagger between artificial poses and self-forgetfulness. The observer feels a combination of curiosity and empathy. He is conspiratorially connected to the scene and the characters, drawn into the moods, tensions, constellations and delicious fantasies – and ultimately into the question of how people become what they are. This dimension is contemplatively subdued, lightened by desaturated colours in mild, soft, airy pastels of pink, light blue and sulphur yellow, and the reduced action is narrated in a whisper. These are snapshots of the moment of understanding. Of what? One senses it. And one also senses the small, hidden monstrosities.

The cocoon is at the centre of Tina Wohlfarth's new works: a large-format mezzotint, complemented with colour and metal pigments and other elements, incorporated into elaborate embossed printing and finished with filigree paper cut passages. The work is simply a universe that the artist has been working on since 2019. And it is a sensation in its combination of very old but highly effective – and rare! – artistic techniques that immediately attract the viewer's attention. At first glance simply a depicted hoodie, Der Cocon is the highly complex form of a portrait without a face. The intertwining of divergent techniques greatly expands the stylistics of modern forms of representation. The complementary works on display also provide insight into artistic forms of expression that have once again been taken to extremes. The works presented in the current show are also a continuation of the large work groups Ophelia and human landscapes.

Both artists are primarily exhibiting new works that require no justification. They are large, magnificent, and can afford to be quiet, quiet to the point of being unspoken and calm in minimal gestures to the effect of a well-placed silence that defends inner peace against external noise; works that are quieter than loud.

© Dr. Tina Simon, puplicist, Leipzig, August 2025