246 08O Painting

Brigitte Broquet was born in 1958 in Departement Pas de Calais, a region in France in which the landscape and inhabitants alike were highly influenced by coal mining. After relocating to Germany, she quickly developed a strong connection to the industrial landscape of the Ruhr especially in and around Dortmund. For several decades she has observed the change that Dortmund’s artistic and cultural institutions have undergone in a city once rightfully known for its steel, coal and beer. She has observed the change in landscape in the urban outskirts of the Ruhr region with similar fascination. Her artistic work is to be understood as a documentation of the change. This work the outcome of her observations and results from the philosophy that abstract painting is a process of reduction which transforms both visible representations and »the inner nature«. As a consequence her paintings develop new figurations that evoke an entirely un-objective, sensuous experience. Nonetheless the objective presentation in her work is of central importance. Looking at the painting, one finds the abstract color world portraying a deep sky and a comparatively low landscape, features reminiscent of the Dutch landscape paintings. This kind of image composition, found in several of Broquet’s paintings, is due to her French homeland. During her childhood at the seaport of Boulogne-sur-mer, the painter spent a lot of time at the waterfront, where she came to love the breadth of the sea and the sky. In the tiniest fraction of seconds, within a moment, the artist presents a second image to the viewer: an image within the image. Under the influence of black light it seems as if a curtain is drawn and a secret disclosed.