Karin Lambrecht (Porto Alegre, RS, 1957). Lives and works in Porto Alegre.
For Karin Lambrecht, painting is action, is life and death; painting is a process, and action that gathers the body of thought. An artist from the 1980s generation, she had a special room at the 25th Biennial and participated in the iconic exhibition Como vai você, geração 80?, in 1984. In the same decade, she incorporated industrial waste into her paintings. In the early days of her career, Lambrecht reconceived the canvas and the way of painting – eliminating the frame, stitching the material, and using torn and burned canvas. Gestural abstraction, a characteristic of the 80s generation, represents the central axis; her works inhabit a space between painting and sculpture, speaking to Arte Povera, to Joseph Beuys, they are political but also corporeal. The volumes weigh like a body, the boundaries or negations of spaces dialogue with the scale. In the 1990s, the artist began to incorporate organic materials into her paintings, such as earth and blood, which dictate the recurrent tones. The reddish tone of life, and also of death, is repeated, and when exposed to the weather the works incorporate nature's contribution, it's time and cycles. There are recurrent symbols in her work, like crosses, spilt animal blood, references to the body: vehicles for the spectator’s identification with the work. Throughout Karin Lambrecht’s career, time has been understood as a vital condition of art. In the installation 9 de agosto de 1949, dia e noite, Camus em Porto Alegre (9 August 1949, day and night, Camus in Porto Alegre) (2008), this matter reaches its summit, revering the existentialist philosopher.
For Karin Lambrecht, painting is action, is life and death; painting is a process, and action that gathers the body of thought. An artist from the 1980s generation, she had a special room at the 25th Biennial and participated in the iconic exhibition Como vai você, geração 80?, in 1984. In the same decade, she incorporated industrial waste into her paintings. In the early days of her career, Lambrecht reconceived the canvas and the way of painting – eliminating the frame, stitching the material, and using torn and burned canvas. Gestural abstraction, a characteristic of the 80s generation, represents the central axis; her works inhabit a space between painting and sculpture, speaking to Arte Povera, to Joseph Beuys, they are political but also corporeal. The volumes weigh like a body, the boundaries or negations of spaces dialogue with the scale. In the 1990s, the artist began to incorporate organic materials into her paintings, such as earth and blood, which dictate the recurrent tones. The reddish tone of life, and also of death, is repeated, and when exposed to the weather the works incorporate nature's contribution, it's time and cycles. There are recurrent symbols in her work, like crosses, spilt animal blood, references to the body: vehicles for the spectator’s identification with the work. Throughout Karin Lambrecht’s career, time has been understood as a vital condition of art. In the installation 9 de agosto de 1949, dia e noite, Camus em Porto Alegre (9 August 1949, day and night, Camus in Porto Alegre) (2008), this matter reaches its summit, revering the existentialist philosopher.
