Well known for her large-format ink drawings, artist Lisa Pahlke deals with motifs of fragmentation in her new series. She locks her gliding, densely strung together line drawings into angular shapes, cuts them up and tilts them. Supple, hitherto free-flowing lines now collide with geometries, the shapes are jagged. Soft movement meets solid, swinging meets hardness, curved meets straight: contrasts are combined.

In general, the bringing together of opposites is characteristic of Lisa Pahlke's work. Her works move in the ambivalent field between drawing and sculptural object, between abstraction and concretion. This openness allows a high degree of interpretative freedom. Do we see abstract lines or imitations of fabric? Are we looking at landscapes or movements? Are they shards or geometries? Lisa Pahlke avoids final clarity. Her works are more questioning, searching explorations than assertions. They are created in a dialogue between the draughtswoman and the drawing. In this dialogue, much is negotiated that happens outside the two. Pahlke reacts to forms and themes, to thoughts and questions that she - carefully groping - lets flow into the creative process. These can be theatre experiences just as much as everyday experiences, news or works by other artists. Lisa Pahlke has recently been working extensively with polygons, for example, since she and her artist colleague Matthias Lehmann first created expansive, sculptural collaborative works out of paper in 2021. This collaboration, which continues to this day, also leaves its mark here.

Beyond that, Lisa Pahlke does not remain untouched by the impositions of our time. Like a seismograph, she picks up the vibrations of our present without having to refer to specific current events. It is enough that the broken and fragmented determine the pictorial impression of her new group of works. With all her sensitive graphic realisation, she demonstrates the idea of deconstruction in all its drasticness. Like Lucio Fontana, she does not shy away from cuts and slits. These set the paper in motion, which bends and curls - as if in pain. Doilies show burn marks, glass splinters, crystals become brittle. Some works are reminiscent of shards, especially the gallery's seemingly broken shop window. Its splintering seems to cast a reddish, perspective-distorted shadow on the wall inside: Not for the first time, Lisa Pahlke has left the confines of the paper and drawn directly onto the wall. The inside is here - also in a figurative sense - shaped by the outside. And quite incidentally, Lisa Pahlke again unites a pair of opposites through the interweaving of interior and exterior space.

The aesthetically most decisive polarity, however, is in every single one of her works. The artist succeeds in bringing to life the beauty that can be found in what has been destroyed. The splinters come together to form something new. In this way, Lisa Pahlke counters disillusionment with a pictorial idea, disaster with a chance, resignation with hope.

Text: Dr Carolin Quermann