Anna Virnich: ’Geflüster’ – Documentation

Anna Virnich Untitled #92, 2020 Bleached polyester, lining, polyester, silk, nettle, raw silk, yarn on wooden stretch frame 160 × 120 × 3,5 cm

Anna Virnich ’Geflüster’
Gallery DREI, Cologne
November 20, 2020 – January 16, 2021

The materialization of colors is the origin of every work by Anna Virnich.

On display are fine fabrics made of mustard-yellow crepe, silky taffeta in lavender shades and rectangles of wrinkled, coarse-pored nettle. In its radiance, a royal blue attracts all the attention of the moment, salmon-colored silk slides between crepe de chine and ultramarine. The middle edge is folded so that the end tapers to a sharper point. The seams connect it and separate it from the rest of the composition: its shape describes the space.

The whisper is a special kind of voiceless speech, which, in contrast to the usual expression of the voice, is a noise and not a sound. Virnich’s pictures seem to articulate an elastic noise. They communicate – with themselves and their environment. The artist’s works do not promise anything, even if they could predict the future.

Khaki over a jade green stripe: Each painting features landmarks through which deep canyons or protective coats are created. A painting can rage and rest, roar or be tame. It can trigger excitement, expectation, and also uncertainty, which can make it seem alive. In their abstract transience, these works have been put together to form a body that grows beyond itself. The penetrating image seems to want to communicate itself. This body here in space is not an image, but rather a hybrid, something bundled, crossed and mixed, which reveals itself in the echo of its whisper.

All images: Courtesy Drei, Cologne / Text: Marlene Schenk


Anna Virnich (b. 1984, German) lives and works in Berlin. In 2013 she graduated from
the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Braunschweig, Germany, where she studied in
the class of Walter Dahn.