Miriam Cahn’s and Peppi Bottrop’s works open an interesting dialogue between generations and gender, abstract and figurative images following their strong performative approach that both oeuvres have in common.

Paintings and drawings by Swiss artist Miriam Cahn (b. in 1949) thematize issues relevant to modern society, making her artworks a testament of socio-political changes and raising existentially questions. Influenced by performance art and the feminist movement, Miriam Cahn started to develop large coal drawings of male-dominated symbolic vocabulary in the 1980s. Often, she used her female body to create the drawings in a performative act. Today, she still paints the same way. From her early works to her later creations, Miriam Cahn focuses on the human (body) as well as its relations to and its context in civilization. Subjects are pictured in their fragility, though a glimpse of strength remains ubiquitous.

A similar approach is followed by German artist Peppi Bottrop (b. 1986) who uses mostly coal, though he creates drawings in geometric shapes such as squares, circles and triangles. In doing so, he is always driven and pushed by an active impulse, which again is absorbed by his vibrating lines not only visibly expressing speed and energy, but also sensing it. Often they appear rich and agile, then again manically packed or calm, stoic and poetic in their dense asceticism never losing their energetic feeling. Mostly due to the dark color of his linesand strokes, which in physical terms ironically is an absorber of light, the composition initiates a vibrant synergy. In addition, as he sometimes paints on plasterboard, directly on the wall or on various installed layers, his graphic works oscillate between paintings and sculpture indicating a distinctive visual language that shifts between constructivism and deconstructivism, between figuration and abstraction.