With the exhibition shifter 68projects presents large-scale canvases of Berlin artist Michelle Jezi- erski. These paintings use space and time as a jumping-off point to look at perspectival space in abstraction and landscapes.

Infused with a restless and spirited energy, free from both established conventions and outdated formalisms, Michelle Jezierski’s work conjures whirling scenarios of juxtaposing images where light reverberates through vivid, gripping colours. Informing her work is a sensorial idea of fragmented space — at the same time synchronic and deferred — with the landscape as a catalyst where the limitations of two-dimensionality are explored through the introduction of geometric lines and fixed frames that disrupt the picture plane. This creates an optical illusion that seemingly encompasses multiple dimensions within one flat surface.

All the above elements meld seamlessly with a focus on the push and pull of spatial perception as opposed to the representation of a concrete image, turning away, as a result, from traditional landscape composition. Acting as a stimuli on the viewer’s subjective reception and eschewing narrative restrictions, her paintings are, at the same time, surreal and evocative. The colour scheme — used freely and serving both an emotional and a structural function — touches upon the avant-garde innovations of fauvisme, emphasizing the surreal nature of her paintings. Colours are used as sculpting elements, creating and altering the perspective within the frame of work. In a manner akin to that of the Fauvists, the gist is less in the work’s meaning — of essential importance in academic art — than on it’s form, colour and immediacy. Pulling inspiration from different sources, they seek an expression based on painting as a stand-alone piece. Reality is no longer approached through a naturalist perspective, as nature is now seen as a catalogue of signs where elements can be picked from and freely transposed; hence the idea of “pure painting” is elevated through the use of “explosive colour”, shunning any type of formal constraint or framework. A combination of fluid and sharp lines shape the borders where the sky meets the earth creating a rhythm that vibrates in every painting with its very own light.

By way of a two-dimensional painting technique, characterized by an exceptional visual strength — particularly in the colour realm — on the threshold between landscape and geometry, instinct and logic, Michelle Jezierski’s art is suggestive of the opening of a profoundly contemplative interpretation of nature rather than a syllogistic one. Could this be a forerunner of an interpretation of dreams devoid of any surrealist connotation?

Michelle Jezierski is an US-American artist, born in 1981 in Berlin, and studied at Berlin Univer- sity of the Arts under Tony Cragg. In 2005, she received a scholarship from Cooper Union in New York City, where she studied under Amy Sillman. In addition to Germany, her works have been shown at exhibitions in Croatia, Israel, Italy and the U.S. and are represented in numerous interna- tional public and private collections.