The titles of these abstract, strictly geometrically designed paintings are surprising, particularly because none of them has a concrete or figurative relation to the themes of marine, landscape or portrait. How are they to be understood?
When researching into norms, relations and proportions in art, Sabine Straßburger noticed that not only the contents of pictures but also the picture formats follow certain basic rules and standardizations. Since the 19th century in France, for instance, standard formats are in use for certain themes: Always different ones for „seascape“, „landscape“ and „portrait“.
Their different sizes are just as standardized: No. 20, no. 30 or no. 100, etc. Sabine Straßburger took over these historical formats and put them onto her canvasses as drawn-in rectangles. Different colour qualities underline the difference of the formats and a stylized ruler often appearing at the pictures edges points to the different measurements,
„Painting is my way of thinking“, says Sabine Straf3burger But it is no thinking that communicates through language, that expresses itself by words and sentences. lt is an observing and reflective and at the same time feeling and sensitive thinking which Sabine Straßburger translates into colours and forms and which she examines in many variations of impressive, austere beauty
From the very beginning, she follows two strands in her work: On the one hand, she continually analyzes and inspects her own pictorial means: She explores the material quality and optical effect of the colour its contrast and tonality — whether light or dark. pure or mixed — or the structure and quality ofthe paint’s application — whether glazed, transparent or syrupy, covering. But she is also concerned with the format of the pictures and the relation of the height and width of their outer measurements, of the inner surface and edge, of depth and surface.
On the other hand, she is occupied with the development of a pictorial language in a lexical-etymological or a semantic sense: In this endeavour she is concerned with the meaning of colourfulness and signs, with terms and facts for which she has, in the course of time, created a type of picture code or geometric-abstract vocabulary consisting of lines, crosses, brackets, circle segments, dots and other signs marking, defining or limiting surfaces or spaces also outside the artistic context. These signs include rectangular stripes of colour of varying size which occasionally appear in her paintings. They look like colour charts ard document the layers of paint put one on top of the other by Sabine Straßburger in order to build up her intensive colour planes. lt follows that they contain not only a technical and explanatory aspect but also a time dimension of the paint application process. Sometimes the deeper lying colour tones shine through and lend to her paintings very individual colour hues.