Monochrome surface areas of different colour shades of colour contrasts crash into each other. Surfaces of similar size appear in different formats. Demarcation marks indicate a picture space forming a cut-out. A window and a field emerge where picture standard and individual interpretation, world and world view, memories and representation of perceptions meet. Sometimes parallel colour bars or equal signs function as hinges linking areas of different colours and formats. At other times lines function as separators to demarcate an open inner space. Pictures also appear in fragments and the viewer immediately feels invited to act as co-author, complementing active perception with his or her own history.
Sabine Straßburger has consistently refined her pictorial language. In her latest works she pursues her basic themes in condensed form. In earlier works the artist used archaic signs placed onto a blottesque grounding. Undecipherable though they are the signs still claim a meaning, creating an aura of mystery and turning the spectator into a tracker and picture archaeologist. Onomatopoeic titles heighten the impression of discoveries from distant cultures and past times.
In the works that follow, languages particles replace the indistinct signs: By taking this step, Straßburger’s artistic practice has, at an early stage, gained a double perspective in her aesthetic perception. According to her understanding of art, language and painting belong together. Her construction of pictures resembles that of language, because she does not separate pictures from their linguistic disclosure. But she also uses and accentuates the openness which distinguishes pictures from texts.
Thus, for instance, in her picture series she makes use of the linguistic signs between words: full stops, colons and brackets insert themselves into the finely resonating colour material. Punctuation represents the linguistic corset, structuring and ordering the flow of the text, combining what belongs together, building structures, organizing levels into layers and clarifying connections. If used in isolation and thereby elevated from its supporting role to a leading one, punctuation highlights the gaps in language in both senses. The space between a pair of brackets becomes an area for the viewer’s projections. Simultaneously, the sign points to the connotations and correspondences in language and the sound behind words which meets with a different reception from every ear.
There is another constituent characteristic of language to be found in Sabine Straßburger’s pictorial art: convention and generalization. Language locks experiences and an outlook on life into set formulae, links the physical presence of signs to the material world, renders individual views of the world abstract through its communication-promoting formulaic structure and still continues to be suitable as a receptacle for objective as well as subjective contents.
Sabine Straßburger exemplifies the conventions at the origin of pictures, by linking them to a discovery she made when viewing 19th Century French art. She noticed that certain formats correspond to certain genres. The measurements for portrait, landscape and seascape paintings follow fixed norms for an astonishing number of years. One explanation may be the correspondence of the format to the subject. But Straßburger is more interested in the principle governing the standardization than in the reasons for a specific convention.