<h5>Extended until<br>April 11, 2013</h5>

LEERE RÄUME

Engdaget Legesse

In my work as an artist, I have, over the past twenty years, absorbed various influences and processes, looking for what makes my pictures represent the best of myself. These different phases were characterized by a constantly changing confidence in art.

I painted over my old pictures. This was a new beginning without immutable instructions. The content of these new images was reduced without becoming minimalist. Thoughts, claims, feelings and hopes may prove to work as a ballast, especially if they block the view of a clear line.

There are new "empty spaces" built on the old screens. The past work was no longer or hardly visible. It is still there, but the new layer has also donated space for new content.

A friend, the filmmaker and writer Leo Lindner, once wrote that, despite all the experimentation and different influences in my work, my handwriting was always unmistakable. However, the individual style in the process of the artistic search is nothing you should or can hold on to by itself.

From there - my painting studies in Addis Ababa - to here - my living and working in Berlin - as an artist, I've gone not only across international borders but also beyond my own borders. The latter arise again and again in the artistic process. You work on them - with confidence and insecurity at the same time - until you overcome them. The old pictures, which should represent the best of myself, were overcrowded. The "empty spaces" have initially created a new space, the space provided for simplicity and clarity of thought, work, and partly also of form.

The "empty spaces" are also changeable, like a freshly made flat. There are no places of permanent evacuation, but there are rather spaces that open up new complexity in the premises open to new shapes and colors. Thus they allow an in-depth look while also referring to the source - an "empty space" - and the development that can generate clarity and simplicity simultaneous to confusion and complexity.

The focus of my art exhibition in the series "Empty spaces" are paintings, drawings, and one or more objects.