Tatjana Danneberg at Dawid Radziszewski Gallery

Artist: Tatjana Danneberg

Venue: Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw, Poland

Date: October 1 – November 28, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw

Tatjana Danneberg uses photographs as the basis for her works. But not photos randomly chosen from her iPhone roll. They are made intentionally, sometimes with an analog camera, maybe lo-fi aesthetics. She captures blurred memories, caught in between important events. Days on which nothing really happened; places you don’t even remember visiting. Tatjana’s camera remains most active among moments frozen in time.

The motifs are casual. Drying rack, vacuum cleaner – the size of a car, monumental, as if it painted itself, lipstick held in hand, flippers. A wicker chair no one needed, set on fire in a garden. Nothing nostalgic or sentimental.

Danneberg scales up the photos and prints them on transfer foil which she then paints in gesso. Once it’s dried she wets it again to stick it to the canvas. The final shape of the painting will be known once the foil is removed.

What is left is a fragmentary image made out of her recorded non-memories, tracked by strokes left by the glue binder. As if the brush knew exactly what to paint. But it was guided through the canvas by the artist’s body, its strength and stamina, her height, the width of her arms. Brushstroke by brushstroke, rhythmically, she composes her paintings in an intuitive choreography.

Tatjana Danneberg (b. 1991 in Vienna) lives and works in Warsaw.