Ruth Senn

Dr Roland Scotti about Ruth Senn`s most recent works 2006

The most-recent works of Davos (Switzerland) based artist Ruth Senn represents her consistent tackling of the challenges thrown up by the phenomenon of colour.

She takes on, in a variable wall/floor installation, the compositional schemes of her earlier series of works, visually quoting their austere image layout and strict colour structure, while at the same time adding a random sense of openness that heralds a freer, and ultimately liberated, way of dealing with abstract traditions; particularly the use of paint and colour.

Ruth Senn's latest paintings are characterised by their subdued use of different hues, thereby making her older works appear "colourful" by comparison. What the artist seeks to express here is no longer the harmony of different colour-values in a predetermined sequence, but rather the simpler, and far more radical, question of what it is to perceive colxour itself. As you look at them, these images - which appear monochromatic at first glance - developx an intense aura of colour that creates a vibrant spectral space of its own. The series of horizontal stripes points to the unbounded, or perhaps never-completable nature of the composition, with sets of contrasts between pure-grey zones and transverse areas where blends of colour are gradually iantroduced. Depending on the angle of observation and the way light falls on the object, these colour planes emoerge from the fabric of the image and come to the foreground, dominating the adjacent areas to the right and left, and continue beyond the boundaries of the image itself to redefine the surrounding space. It seems as if the paintings would breathe.

In my view, it is in the discreet, but impressively vital, way in which these new objects transform the static pigments into an eventful, moving life that supposes such an important innovation in the work of Ruth Senn.

Dr. Roland Scotti, Kurator Liner Museum, Appenzell

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