o.T., Kohle auf Papier, 70 x 50 cm Drawing

ISABELLA GABRIEL NIANG Curiosity powers Isabella Gabriel Niang's painting, fuels her desire to look behind the scenes, to see what makes things work, learn of relationships and give them expression in her painting: to capture her vision, insights and experience on the two-dimensional surface as a developing concept without preconception. Isabella Niang's creative commitment and impact is the result both of taking this path and of the surprise and the resistance experienced in the taking of it. Her painting lives from the materiality of the surface, from the sensuous structure, a vulnerable, quiet tenderness and an expressive act of liberation. Her paintings and drawings walk a tightrope between concrete and abstract. Shapes floating in highly individual treatment reveal themselves, only to withdraw again - outlines clear enough to trigger concrete ideas and associations in the viewer's mind, yet open and free enough to allow the viewer's imagination to wander. Niang's charcoal drawings give artistic expression to existential, emotional states of mind. By developing her powerful, dynamic figurations to the point of dissolution the artist expresses the essence of various states of human existence - pain, joy, passion and vulnerability. At the heart of all painting is the act of experiencing. Niang applies layer upon layer of paint, and in destroying existing forms gives rise to new ones. From compositions, shapes, structures and fields of colour emerges something previously non-existent, something that refers to each of us. Hidden, translucent inner light. The creative process as verification of existence. For further information please contact: Galerie der STIFTUNG INTERNATIONALES FORUM Grossbeerenstr. 56, 10965 Berlin M +49 (0)177 300 15 53 Isabella Gabriel Niang wurde 1959 in Mainz geboren. Sie studierte an der Universitt der Knste Berlin und absolvierte 1997 als Meisterschlerin bei Prof K.-H. Herrfurth. Ihre Malerei entwickelt sich aus der inneren Vorstellungskraft auf dem Fundament einer intensiven zeichnerischen Auseinandersetzung mit Figur und Raum. Es geht ihr vor allem um die Schaffung des Menschenbildes in unterschiedlichen Themenzyklen: Sie bewegt sich im Zwischenreich von Gegenstndlichkeit und Abstraktion. Ihre Malerei bildet sinnliche Prsenz der Farbe als substanzielle Materie.