Scores of Light
House for a clairvoyant, dedicated to Christa Wolf’s ‘Kassandra', 4 x 2 x 2 m, Citadel Spandau 2000
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Barbara Beisinghoff has never lost her delight in the unknown. That has to do with the constant persistent movement of boundaries behind which new possibilities open up. Her earlier works were in smaller formats, more strongly focussed on figures and extremely narrative. The atmosphere of many of these works, mostly colour etchings, is broken, mysterious, often dreamlike. Sightings, feelings and thoughts arrange themselves as an image. Etchings were the favoured medium of the artist from the start of her graphic activities. Barbara Beisinghoff has propelled coloured etchings to the height of artistic maturity. Despite that, or because of that she had herself instructed in the technique of lithography between 1982 and 1992, and in 2000 in the technique of collotype printing.
Another exploration during the last few years led her to a completely different domain: the artist turned to the medium of graphic art, to the material paper and gained new ways of creation in a continuous process from this medium. In this respect, light came, to a large degree, into play as an additional element. The characteristic of paper to layer itself during the scooping process into thicker and thinner surfaces which have more or less of a transparent quality, provide additional formal possibilities. The artist sows filigrane items on to the scooping strainer, above which the paper mass only gets felted very thinly and delicately. Watermarks became an important means of creation, a fine water jet ‘wrote' into the paper mass and coloured paper was couched together. Since then many of Barbara Beisinghoff’s exhibitions have been arranged as installations. The semi-transparent, often delicately coloured material of the scooped sheets were especially suitable for that."
Dr. Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz at the award ceremony of the Mainz City Printer Prize 2002
Canopy of Stars and Land Register
Canopy for Li Bai, since 2010 on Mount Lushan in Jiangxi Province in China. The installation under the theme of ‘Poetic Forest’, International Forest Art, is 350 cm high, 150 cm deep and 380 cm wide. The star charts, seasonal symbols and the poem by Li Bai, drilled into the copper, open one’s perception for cosmic events from the Chinese point of view. It is permanently foggy on top of Mount Lushan above the hot plain of Nanchang and the masses of water of Lake Poyang, the Gan Jiang and Jangtsekiang.
2010 Canopy for Li Bai, Mount Lushan