Text: Dr. Maike Salazar Kämpf

The title of the exhibition “Clueless” alludes to the American film satire from the 1990s. Just like the film, Winnie Seifert’s work is anything but naive. On large canvases, we see dynamic objects, light and colors in atmospheric variations. The images are in motion. Not only the title and the work are related to each other, but we are also related to the work, and the different corners of the image interact with each other. Again and again, illusions of depth, light and shadow and figures arise. Winnie Seifert’s paintings seem like a foreboding sur-impressionism or abstract surrealism. There are no clouds or celestial phenomena reflected on the surface of the water lily gardens. Instead of gardens, the inner life is presented, that which is beyond the visible. But we don't see the figurative, clearly irrational aspects of surrealism, but rather colorful associations that change when you look at them. Nevertheless, it is similar to the humor and the strangeness that characterizes surrealism. At first we believe we can see into Winnie Seifert's psyche, but soon it is ourselves who we find ourselves in the pictures. When looking at the pictures, the decisive factor is therefore how we see and not what we see. Just as a picture changes at different times of day, what we see on her canvases changes depending on our mood. They are an elegant version of the blotchographies, like the Rorschach test of psychoanalysis. With their help, we can get to the bottom of our imagination and our innermost being. At the same time, the pictures touch us, change us, sometimes with humor or consolation, sometimes with color and stroke, and so Winnie Seifert succeeds in painting the hard to reach: a gentle activation of our unconscious through observation.