KEWENIG is pleased to present the work of the painter Tamina Amadyar (born 1989 in Kabul, living and working in Berlin) for the first time in Palma de Mallorca. The exhibition "The Big Dipper" brings together the artist's most recent paintings which will take up both the Oratori de Sant Feliu and the adjacent gallery space on the occasion of Nit de l'Art.

Tamina Amadyar's works are dominated by the two central elements of painting: colour and shape. Sometimes autobiographically inspired, they refer to impressions from her childhood and memories of Afghanistan, whose light and colours she captures in images. Other series are related to different trips among others, her longer stays in California.

Amadyar transfers her surroundings into drawing books – this is recognizable from work titles such as "pine hill", "marathon ave" or "bitterfeld". Influenced by these sketches, abstract compositions of colour emerge on the canvas later in her studio. She reduces everyday impressions into simple, organic shapes, that can evoke very personal associations in the observer.

When painting these visual, sensual memories, Amadyar strictly limits herself to only two colours, "because nothing else is necessary," explains the young painter, who was a student of Tal R at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Through them she expresses duality and contrast, encounter and avoidance, stability and vivacity.

Where one colour borders, touches or overlaps the other, the individual forms become visible. The intensity of the colours is obtained by pure pigment dissolved in rabbit-skin glue. In this way, Amadyar combines in her paintings one of the oldest artistic techniques and aspects of Colour Field Painting. The intersections of the painted forms, or shapes of colours - two terms that are equivalent in Amadyar's work - give rise to new colours and forms, culminating in compositions that simultaneously radiate harmony and dissonance, balance and instability, calm and tension.

The title of the exhibition refers to the well-known astrological constellation that has been an important guide for all travellers throughout time. In the series of paintings on display, the artist questions and reflects on the human need to always find familiar images to navigate through the world and to try to understand the inexplicable and unreachable universe. Although, the beginnings of astronomy date back to ancient times, the urge to hold on to images that we can relate to, persists.

Unexpectedly, for a painter, Tamina Amadyar has placed a large paper boat not only in the centre of the exhibition space, but also conceptually in the centre of her exhibition “The Big Dipper”. Like under a sky of shining paintings, it navigates and guides, giving the viewer the chance to see what they want to see.