Creep On, Creepin On - Reception Gallery, Nuremberg by Anna Maria Schönrock 30.11.2024 - 15.12.2024

Once upon a lost time: On the disappearance of the image in the work of Anna Maria Schönrock

“I went to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and mounted. In the distance I heard the sound of a trumpet, and I asked the servant what it meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing.”

(Franz Kafka, from: The Departure)

There is a secret at the heart of the world described in Anna Maria Schönrock’s paintings. As we try to penetrate it we encounter anecdotal springs, yet their origins remain a mystery: riders, portraits of people and animals, forest imagery – all these themes appear to have a Kafkaesque slant and be somewhat enchanted, that is to say, the protagonists operate in a make-believe reality or a sur-reality that they, like the viewer, cannot quite grasp. The humans and animals depicted seem to have sprung from a fairytale world; it is as though they have missed their chance of arriving somewhere else, as though they still have one foot in paradise – but have forgotten what exactly it is that constitutes their “guilt” or even the “innocence” they have supposedly lost. Paradise may be just a breath away, but it remains beyond reach – and the fairytale world too has turned into a utopia, a non-place.

This state of being lost in one’s existence is linked to postmodernism, which (in contrast to Modernism, which pointedly treated as a given existential threat and the loss of the center, and indeed the dissolution of boundaries in all areas of life) asks questions about where we are coming from and where we are going. In all of this, we arrive at the painful recognition that the world we thought we understood, which was quite literally illuminated for us, is in fact more mysterious and even uncanny than ever. Myth and sensuality return. Anna Maria Schönrock is part of a generation of young artists that is inspired by the ambiguity of private myths as covered, for example, by the Leipzig School, while at the same time being driven by an extraordinary feel for pure painting. Schönrock’s oeuvre includes both highly figurative works and extremely abstracted ones, while her true strength lies in the area where the two meet. She continually questions and sounds out their realities – knowing full well that these (let alone “the one” reality) are almost impossible to grasp in our age of virtual reality and media-generated uncertainty.

This may make us somewhat more prone to believing in myths and fairytales. We encounter them as otherworldly realms in these paintings[…].

Anna Maria Schönrock creates an enchanted world while leaving no doubt about its irreality. By mixing mythical, anecdotal and private elements, she draws new inspiration from the traditional genres of landscape, still life, portrait and history/myth painting. [...]

– Günter Baumann