Irmi Obermeyer’s painting is guided by a longing: the longing for the white surface. Instead of completely filling her canvases, she has created more and more white space in her work. White space is not nothing. The emptiness leaves room to breathe, room to unfold. The white takes on its full presence.
White space as a design medium requires courage. In art, we are familiar with the term “horror vacui”, the fear of emptiness, in relation to the opulence of Victorian or Baroque works of art and architecture. In the 20th century, a counterpart developed in modern art. Not least with the Bauhaus aesthetic came the courage to use open spaces. White suddenly came to the fore.
For Irmi Obermeyer, white forms the basis of every work. Before she starts painting, the canvas must be primed. Careful and elaborate preparation is required to ensure that they are smooth and neutral in the end. This preparation is very important to Irmi Obermeyer. The priming is not just preparatory work, but already part of her artistic expression. The white does not remain a background, it becomes an equal counterpart to the rest of the color.
The artist finds inspiration for her motifs in her surroundings. Sometimes it is fabrics, special folds, bodies, sculptures or distortions in nature. These real things, or rather the subjective perception of what she sees, become the transporter. The painting translates the original into its own script using abbreviations.
The Allgäu painter uses only brushes and oil paint in her paintings. In some cases, the paint is mixed with pigments in iridescent shades to give the two-dimensional painting an illusion of plasticity and thus make it appear three-dimensional. Achieving this goal requires absolute presence and attention. It is this presence in the painting process that runs through the artist’s work. Instead of impulsive moments, it is precise preparation and precise technique that the painter uses for her works. The choice and quantity of color tones, the brushes, the surfaces – everything must be prepared before she begins painting. No hesitation or procrastination is allowed to interrupt the flow of the painting, as corrections are hardly possible.
Everything is visible, everything is present.