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Zurich (ptp025/07.08.2020/12:00) - The German-based artist Iris Bodenburg will be represented in Zurich‘s main station hall during the SWISSARTEXPO from 20 to 24 August 2020 with three digitally presented works and her new artist catalogue. The SWISSARTEXPO is an art festival that offers talented artists from all over the world the opportunity to present their works digitally or in the original in one of the most visited halls in Europe.

Iris Bodenburg creates artworks that captivate through their uniqueness and special materials. As a base for her delicate watercolor art she uses elaborately handmade, coarsely structured paper from Nepal, high-quality Kahari-Himalaya paper or the Awagami paper from Japan, whose painting requires outstanding skill and years of experience. Especially figurative painting on these types of material requires a particular sensitivity, as the colors on the lively paper structure flow like a river in the valley of two winding mountains, which find their own course, which must be considered and controlled. Despite these challenges, Bodenburg masters the creation of wonderful works of art which, thanks to her talent for drawing and the wide range of different motifs, make up her unmistakable signature in the art world and remain in the memory of the viewer.

All of her works are emotionally rich visual worlds of intellectual depth and beauty, inspired by the cultures of the most diverse countries and eras. At the SWISSARTEXPO, three testimonies to this exceptional art on traditional paper will be made available to the public digitally on high-resolution screens. „Backtoblack“, „Quellnymphe“ and „La Femme incognito“ are paintings of various women which create a deeply touching atmosphere thanks to their dark color palette and delicately applied brushstrokes. Iris Bodenburg‘s new artist‘s catalogue will also be available to visitors of the art festival to give them an even deeper insight into the artist‘s admirable work.

The catalogue can now also be ordered under artbox-publish.myshopify.com and on Amazon.

SWISSARTEXPO 2020
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Merseburg/MZ - Iris Bodenburg could not have chosen a more fitting title for her exhibition: "Longing for Touch". This perfectly captures the tone of most of the mostly new paintings that the Halle painter and master student of Werner Tübke is showing from Tuesday onwards in Merseburg's Kunsthaus Tiefer Keller - and at the same time describes what many feel in times of Corona-induced distance.

Due to the applicable distance regulations, the exhibition is only opening now and with some restrictions, the planned vernissage is of course cancelled. So the dramaturge and author Cornelia Nitzschke made a virtue of necessity and spoke her speech, in which she warmly pays tribute to the artist and her work, in front of a camera on Thursday: Standing in front of the paintings - and of course in an almost empty hall. The video will be shown to visitors to the exhibition, who are welcome individually or in small groups, and it will also be available on the Cathedral Gallery's website and on YouTube. So there is an opening after all.

Iris Bodenburg, a freelance artist for many years, works in her studio in the middle of and above the city of Halle. She transfers the state of suspension between proximity and distance into her paintings. It is fascinating how she builds bridges to mythology, to motifs of great colleagues such as Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini or to the poetry of other peoples. Everything finds unity and harmony in her works, which she paints on Asian handmade paper. This is a demanding technique because the paint runs with the fibres of the ground, which needs to be carefully considered and mastered.

This "look" lends Iris Bodenburg's paintings a profound beauty that is as enraptured as it is lifelike and sensual. This is reinforced by the well-balanced colouring, in which Iris Bodenburg often uses gold, the tone of light, which adds to the suggestive power of these works.

It is always a matter of strong feelings - as in the central picture of the show, which is dedicated to the Italian Baroque master Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. Em naked female torso, turning her back to the viewer, can be seen in an intimate, physical embrace. La Femme ikognito" is also executed as a supine nude, while "Undine", the legendary nymph, is portrayed as she rises from the water to seek happiness and love from mankind. It ends unhappily. And the knowledge of this colours the background of the picture.

It is almost always female figures that inspire Iris Bodenburg, "Leda" is among them, also "Venus Principle", the goddess of love who gives birth to herself here. It is always about the longing for fulfilment and questions of timeless importance that play a major role in the artist's thinking, feeling and painting: "Where do we come from, where are we going?" In the painting "Dream Walking", one sees a naked woman who seems to merge with the landscape she is walking towards. A few older works are also represented in the show, bull and torero, classic motifs by Iris Bodenburg are not missing. Then there is the "Fiancée" with her ravishing gaze. And the "Kolkvolk", black birds of fate. They too fit the times.

Halle/MZ - When the word "autonomous" is mentioned, some people immediately flinch. Aren't they the ones with the hoodies, where you suspect stones in their jacket pockets? But being "autonomous" for the individual, beyond the mob, actually means nothing other than being self-determined.

This is exactly how the painter and draftswoman Iris Bodenburg from Halle appears. Sovereign and unmistakable in her artistic appearance. She describes herself differently. "I am a loner," she says. There are reasons for that; as a child she was alone a lot and often sad. She fought back with imagination. Early on, she gave herself the name Issa and insisted on it because she liked it better than the one she had been given.

Born in Halle, she grew up in the countryside with her grandparents. According to her story, the people around her had no choice but to accept her as she was. Such a strong character, such a thirst for discovery could not be contained. Some parents, she says, also warned their offspring about the wild child who got ideas and was considered an instigator. Autonomy attracts suspicion.

At times, the adolescent was drawn to art, because there is a free field for people who do not like to live in constraints and concerns. Of course, not without rules, which are already given by the craft, without whose mastery the freedom of thought does not take shape.

Freedom is important to Iris Bodenburg. So is being a loner. And perfection. She lives and works high up in a residential studio from which she keeps a firm eye on her city of Halle. The clouds and the color storms that move across the sky, too. Her subjects, nudes, animal figures and bullfight scenes in particular, are always a matter of the heart. You can see it directly in the pictures. She must like what she paints herself. If others like it too, she is naturally pleased. After all, artists don't live on air and inspiration alone. Exchanging beauty for money is a business that has to be taken care of.

Iris Bodenburg can't imagine any other activity than just that: To be an artist. At first, however, she had learned a "proper" profession in the medical field and was quite successful at it. But she much preferred to draw and paint, she really wanted to do that. And she prevailed. After studying at the Burg Giebichenstein Art Academy in Halle, she became a master student, first with Werner Tübke and later with Gerhard Kettner. Stylistically she followed her imagination, the representational has flowing, sensual forms. The painted bodies seem to breathe and are sometimes of rich, sometimes of rather delicate color.

The "life" of her paintings has not a little to do with the painting ground, which is as unusual as it is fascinating. Years ago, Iris Bodenburg discovered Nepalese papers for herself, which are produced there in an elaborate, ancient handicraft process. Fibrous sheets are created, none of which resembles another: originals even before the artist puts her original on them.

The virtuoso handling of this material is not something you do off the cuff; paper has a special consistency in each case, a life of its own. Iris Bodenburg uses it exclusively. The material allows straight strokes with the pencil, but the watercolor runs with the fiber, even the edges "flow", that can not be completely calculated.

This means that the artist must grant the paper as much strength as she claims for herself. One can also imagine this as a kind of struggle. On the poetic, tender nudes rather does not explain itself. But the motif of the toreros and bulls could already be an image of it.

Iris Bodenburg "tells" of beauty, strength and spirituality, man and animal are on an equal footing, nature in general. From fantastic backgrounds, the individual emerges, even still in the group as in the picture "Flamenco" created in 2019: figures, absorbed in themselves and their passion.