Rita Ackermann — //CRUSH//

Brother and Sister’, an exhibition of new works by the Hungarian-born and New York-based artist Rita Ackermann, draws from personal subject matters. Throughout her practice, Ackermann has continuously challenged means of representation and abstraction in contemporary painting. Her often ghost-like compositions are achieved through sweeping, determined gestures of drawing, painting and erasing, wherein figures rise to the surface only to dissolve again. The new series on view in the Zurich gallery persist in their interrogation of how the artist’s consciousness, intentions, and movements manifest at a borderline between the formal aspects of her oeuvre. Ackermann: “Drawings are like veins; blood vessels leading to the heart…I do not know if life is forever, but I know I make paintings to live. Therefore, I must deconstruct the contours of the figure…Erased, blurred boundaries, no limits.”

Rita Ackermann Brother and Sister

Hauser & Wirth Zürich

17 January — 2 March 2019

Opening 16 January 2019, 6 — 8 pm

Images © Rita Ackermann

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photography by Genevieve Hanson

/ by Laura Bonne /

Hungarian born artist Rita Ackermann presents her most recent series The Chalkboard Paintings alongside a selection of early works that first gained her widespread acclaim in the New York art scene of the early 90s.

In the drawings, collages and paintings on display, the artist continues her trademark superposition of images, characters and narratives, whilst adding a new layer of erasure. Rendering nearly invisible the overall image, the nymphetish girls who have featured in her paintings since the very beginning remain ever so desirable and enigmatic as our favourite objects of desire.