Gabriele Evertz: Colors Make Light

Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present Gabriele Evertz: Colors Make Light, the Brooklyn-based artist’s first solo presentation with the gallery. Born and raised near Berlin, Germany, Evertz (b. 1945) identifies as a color painter, and wields her extensive historical and theoretical knowledge of the subject in pursuit of sensorially joyous outcomes. Despite a precise and disciplined methodology, which fuses the scientific order of the color wheel with the exacting geometry of angle and line, her paintings are not dispassionate in intent or effect but are instead deeply concerned with emotional response. The relationship between the painter and her canvas, and in turn between the painting and the viewer, is a private exploratory experience focused around the pleasures of being a living, sensing creature. 

Evertz’s paintings center the essential role of the viewer’s active observation, as the energy and oscillating effects of their colors come alive and transform within the eye and mind. The perfection of the painted surface, executed in achromatic diagonals and vertical passages of pure, spectral color, removes the hand of the artist entirely. The passive physical function of light reflecting off pigment and into the eye is transmuted by the observer’s perception and memory, resulting in a complex psychological and emotional experience particular to each viewer. Without their engagement, Evertz asserts, the painting does not exist. In this way, viewing her works becomes not just an act of seeing, but an act of creation as well.