Sybille Berger

Exhibition

• COLOUR | FARBE

When I showed them the slides from a Berger show my English friends became engaged in a vigorous debate
over the differences between what they called lilac, old rose, wine red, faded pink and raspberry fool interspersed with discourses on English cakes, puddings and jams. Maroon, they pointed out, was a very popular colour for
school uniforms.

In Germany we don’t have school uniforms, so possibly I am unaware of some of the colours Sybille Berger mixes in her North London studio, while on the other hand I suspect that her German, or more precisely, Southern German origins reach into her work as a thread of memory.

She’s been to India, too, and has some knowledge of fabrics and patterns. In any case she works with a set of disturbing colours and with a set of reassuring colours, which are not identical with light and dark however.

After her time as a student at Goldsmiths College this painter spent several years making what I would call
collages of colours, seeking infallibility. Some time ago, this mode evolved: a central surface is bordered above
and below by thin bands.

Her paintings have become more physical. They have body. They speak into the room; one would like to touch them. Still, I am not sure if Berger’s paintings are concerned with the colours she uses or with those she does not.

Ulf Erdmann Ziegler