Press Release for exhibition (24.11.2020 – 21.11.2021)
Galerie ART CRU Berlin is showing pictures by Sonja Halbfass, who grew up between the USA and Germany. It is the first exhibition of the artist in Berlin.
These extraordinary paintings reach us like messages from another world. We experience pulsating, teeming, abstract color compositions and challenging perspectives, somewhere between Pop, Op and Psychedelic Art; combined with blurred figurative scenes full of symbolism and enigmatic messages, oscillating between impression and expression. There is a lot of power in these 20+ works created over the last 25 years by the artist.
The paintings convey a spherical atmosphere with compositions that seem to float in the universe. In some of her works on paper, Halbfass forms almost surreal, delicately detailed motifs with a sweeping brushstroke and uncanny precision. She impresses with her broad artistic spectrum, perceptible as an exciting struggle between style and content. In the painting “Kraftwerk” (1998), for example, she groups a hospital bed and a winged woman supplemented by other ghostly figures around a central power plant in a confusing nightmarish scene. In contrast to the disturbing content, the pastel colors suggest harmony, with parts of the entire composition seeming to blend into each other.
Sonja Halbfass was born in 1968 in Eschwege (Hessen). She grew up in an academic household, spending her formative years in the USA after several moves between the American continent and Germany. She was an artistically talented and model student. After being hospitalized at the age of 18 she went on to study psychology and obtained a university degree. In 1989 she relocated to Germany where she has since been living in various forms of sheltered housing, such as currently in the apartments of KommRum e.V. and Die Brücke gGmbH.