LEAP
by Sibylle Baltzer

Exhibition Dates:
Tuesday 15 May to Friday 20 July 2007
Venue:
Delfina, 50 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD
Private View:
Tuesday 26 June 2007
Opening Hours:
Monday to Friday from 10am to 12pm / 3pm to 5pm

Baltzer’s aim is to convey a certain aspect of the urban experience in her work; these experiences are flashes or occurrences, which signify an activity, and a sense of speed. Sibylle attempts to convey the contradiction in our relationship to the built environment: attraction / repulsion, and reveal its poetic aspect. She does this using raw pigments, concrete and plaster, which refer physically to her subject.

Her work can be interpreted as signs, but their meaning has to remain unknown, or open, like the signs or graffiti found all over our cities. Signs, like exclamation marks that seem to randomly punctuate walls in an enigmatic manner. The paintings are to be solid and blunt, yet divulge some fragility and mysteriousness. Being abstract paintings, she nevertheless sees them as referring to experiences of the ‘real’.

When not in the studio, Sibylle gathers interesting perspectives, compositions and textures in the remaining industrial, derelict areas of the city by the means of photography. The paintings are closely or remotely based on the photographs. She then chooses these areas for their melancholic and poetic qualities (dilapidated past grandeur) as well as their richness in textures. Sibylle constructs these textures using raw pigments, which are mixed with an acrylic binder. Pigments have an original - ancient - association, as well as offering a great flexibility in the creation of the work.

Baltzer was born in Paris and lives and works in Morocco. Her education started at the Ecole Nationale Superieures des Beaux-Arts, Paris, before moving on to the Chelsea School of Art in 1998, followed by the Slade School of Fine Art (MA) in 2002. Baltzer’s extensive training has led to her success as a young emerging contemporary artist with recent exhibitions at Centro de Arte Moderno, Madrid, Spain, Hackney Forge, ‘Multum in Parvo’, London and ‘Art at The Tower’, Berkeley Homes, Tabard Square, London, as well as several works being placed in private and corporate collections in Britain, France, Italy and Spain.