“What lies deepest in the world” is the title Anna Steinert has given to her second solo exhibition at Tanja Wagner, a choice that already suggests that her interest does not lie in the everyday or the obvious, but in something more fundamental. In her current body of work, Steinert refers—so she says—to the Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia, who understands trees and plants as pioneers that have created our world.
They are the great alchemists of our world: using sunlight, they transform water and carbon into nourishing sugar while releasing oxygen. As breathing animals, we are their creation. If we wish to approach the world of plants with renewed respect and understanding, we must therefore immerse ourselves—breathing—into The Roots of the World, as Coccia titles his essay, in which the image of immersion captures one of the fundamental characteristics of plant being.
It may be assumed that Anna Steinert has followed these exercises. She has immersed herself in the vegetal being of summer. At least this is what one is inclined to believe when encountering the richness and breadth of colour in her paintings. Her abstractions—such as That Nature Which We Ourselves Are III—are executed primarily in oil stick, occasionally combined with oil paint, placing simple white, yellow, black, orange, and violet circles onto blue grounds. In Living Within One Another I, vertical bands of orange-red meet a green that gradually transitions into blue. Other abstract forms in blue, yellow, and green appear, while the horizontal colour gradients along the upper edge of the canvas, above all, evoke associations with a summer landscape.
Yet because all of this is achieved through simple forms and a clear, saturated application of colour, the reference point is not Impressionism as a refined art of surfaces. Rather, Steinert’s paintings truly immerse themselves in the summery being of plants. Her images bloom.
