Eva-Maria Schön

Eva-Maria Schön’s work looks at the minute details of form. Whether she uses the tip of her finger or, at the technical extreme, micro-photography, she creates and represents organic forms; her final conclusion visually reminiscent of the natural world. Materials used are basal as are the drawings she creates. She uses a puddle of ink as the source (origin) of her finger drawings which she then, when completed, shows en masse simply displayed in glass cabinets or pinned on the wall. Distractions are few in both the concentrated way of working and the final exhibition

As the artist explains “The shapes appearing on the paper through the pressure of my finger always have a beginning and an end. A drop of paint is the spring and the finger is dry when I finish. What goes unnoticed in a droplet of water can be made visible, for a moment, in the drop of paint with the help of my finger and until the paint is dry. The form can only grow while the spring is flowing. The finger dances in the paint as long as it is moist. Should the finger come up out of the paint, the ease of movement is quickly lost. Therefore I repeat the process and dip in again” This series of works, entitled HandVokabular is often paired; the first drawing is spontaneous and the second a conscious attempt to repeat the first. Total duplication is impossible even when Eva-Maria Schön uses the spatula (in place of her finger) in some of her later drawings

Alongside these drawings Eva-Maria Schön has developed her work using photography and the source for this is a varied as water samples taken from lakes and seas and objects within Natural History collections found in large cities. In an earlier residency in New York Eva-Maria Schön collected, from her allocated studio space, various kinds of insects and spiders and observed them under a microscope. Filming them she then used the resulting video to chose individual frames which she photographed (from the monitor) and enlarged; details were then shown which would never have been visible to the naked eye. Returning to the place where she found the insects, Eva-Maria Schön displayed the microscopic photographs. She explains “In this project both city and nature evoke natural history meaning the change from the given presence of nature to the conscious observation of it with the help of technically produced images. The view through the microscope is the way through the centre of the city.”