Silent Geometry

Christiane Kaufmann's works are based on mathematically constructed forms and are close to Concrete Art. However, she breaks with the rigorous elimination of human traces in the artwork, as minimal variations in the structure occur due to the freehand drawing. In a constant repetition of straight lines from a single point, she creates geometric surfaces, often upright rhombuses through which the underlying paper or underpaintings shine through, sometimes contrasting with forms worked in pastel. In doing so, she constantly explores the in-between: between painting and drawing, between line and surface, between repetition and new creation.

Each of the hand-drawn lines resembles the previous one but is never a perfect copy. Christiane Kaufmann's drawings are based on repetition, but paradoxically cannot be copied. In the spirit of Marianne Gronemeyer's observations, repetition represents an alternative concept to technically exact reproduction. A computer or an AI may generate supposedly flawless and endless products, but this is what makes them arbitrary. Programs do not have to exert themselves, overcome or concentrate. Christiane Kaufmann's drawings, however, only emerge from the struggle with ideas and materials, with form and fallibility - in short, from human creativity.

Mathematical principles play a major role in all of this, for example in dealing with the principle of Truchet tiles. Surfaces and lines meet to form a square divided by the diagonal. It is drawn by hand, digitally reproduced and combined into different arrangements, which in turn provide the basis for hand-drawn works. Once again, she explores the in-between - that between the analog and digital spheres, between man and machine. Her art thus forms a counterpoint to digitality and at the same time is situated in its field of tension.

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