Adelheid Sandhof

Opening speech for the first exhibition Berlin Gallery Mitte, 1988

Title
Opening speech for the first exhibition Berlin Gallery Mitte, 1988
Original text

The occupation with still lifes gives Adelheid Sandhof the possibility to get to know formal and color laws, to observe effects, to pursue. Positions open up new possibilities. The artist discovers for herself the variations of a theme. Since the beginning of the 80s, she has mainly created still lifes and collages. This discovery was not preceded by anything spectacular, elaborate motif search could not be, because there were the children and their affection and expectations.

In the house where they live is the studio. This is also where the objects are kept, which are then carefully selected, assigned to each other and found again in the picture. Often they are things that seem to have already given up their actual use value: tinted bottles, bowls, sheets of newspaper, scraps of fabric, sugar cones, stretched fans, etc. A collection of daily necessities and the quiet world of dreams.

Adelheid Sandhof feels connected to an artistic concept whose starting point is "the visual reflection". It is less about the concreteness of the objects, but rather about their directness. Sandhof designs, but she designs in such a way that the things make their right to inherent value perceptible. The existence of this life of its own is bound to certain laws. Perhaps this is precisely the prerequisite that awakens the desire to allow the fixed and the fixed to become attackable. For the artist this becomes important, she comes continuously to the extension of the form thought, becomes more generous in the arrangement of the form and color groupings. The colorfulness is increased to the finest sensitivity. There is hardly any color depth and color structure, she renounces radiance. The source of light is white, sometimes painted over, it breaks the other color and sets light points. The color palette ranges from cool shades of gray-green to pink-violet. Alone in the studio is conceived, changed discarded, disciplined. Sketches are made, preliminary work sketches the composition. In the watercolors, the color sets essential accents. Adelheid Sandhof's pictures are in my memory in restrained, clever, serious tenderness. Emotion becomes a reflecting factor here. Symbolic is not meant with Sandhof. Her pictures are of clear naturalness, yet they leave open the possibility of an enigmatic discovery, e.g. the still lifes in limited interior spaces. Diagonals and perpendiculars divide and set boundaries. They remind us of the feeling of insecurity in each of us, which in and of itself is not unpleasant, there is an irrepressible sense behind it.

Sandhof leaves room for points of contact, tries things out, thereby expanding her sense of reality and field of vision. In addition to the search for artistic expression, the content of the design is essential in Adelheid Sandhof's works. Through her personal inner sympathy, the artist suggests the