There is no doubt that the black, the gray and the white have a certain attraction. As fine rivulets and broad streams, Annegret Poschlep has let the colors flow into each other with virtuosity. And if you look at this painting for a while in the Meeting Point Art, the gallery of the Ottobrunn Art Association, you may feel like the people in the short story that the author Petra Winter wrote about Poschlep’s pictures. The works of art take you to another time. “It’s a modern fairy tale,” says Poschlep. A story from yesterday, today and tomorrow – and also the substructure of Poschlep’s pictures shown in Ottobrunn, which has become the text.
“Time Travel” is the title of Poschlep’s exhibition, which can be seen in Ottobrunn until July 30th. And anyone who accepts the idea that art can open doors to other spheres will not find themselves in the Ottobrunn of the hippies or in a future in which people live on blue pills and float through the district on skateboards . But in a completely different world.
Erwin Poschlep, husband of the artist who lives in Munich, also contributed some of his graphic city silhouettes to the exhibition. A visit to the small gallery at Rathausstrasse 5 these days is above all a journey into the world of Annegret Poschlep, 77 years old, mother of two and grandmother of four. She has also been running the “Annrot” painting school on Siemensstrasse in Ottobrunn since 2007. Red is Poschlep’s favorite color, which she repeatedly uses in her pictures. For her, red embodies warmth, passion and liveliness, she explains. She also likes to work with black. Do not be afraid of the color associated with mourning and death. And avoid the others.
Poschlep learned to paint at the Bad Reichenhall Art Academy
Not so Annegret Poschlep, who is currently showing some works in vertical format in the basement of the gallery. As a contrast, she has placed circles and lines in strong red on a black background, then again it is turquoise and blue that really make the black shine. Poschlep is actually a financial accountant, but art came into her life 30 years ago. And how it works: Somehow art and artist couldn’t get away from each other. Poschlep attended master classes at the Bad Reichenhall Art Academy and deepened her knowledge at the Free Academy in Augsburg. It does not work? Doesn’t exist with her. Painting can be learned, like everything else. “A good part of it is work,” she says. “The rest is fantasy and the joy of playing with the colors.”
The artist lets the colors flow.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
And Poschlep is one of those lateral entrants who stand out with a particularly high level of ingenuity: the artist was already letting the colors flow when nobody in this country suspected that the technique called “pourring” would one day become a trend. Annegret Poschlep pours the colors from buckets or cans onto the canvas, blows them off with a hair dryer, lets them drip from a pipette or sets filigree accents with disposable syringes. “Depending on how much color you want it to be,” she says. And depending on how much freedom she wants to give the colors on the canvas. Whether she lets them run unhindered, or gently steers and guides.
The path to art as a path to freedom
In general, Poschlep’s path to art was also a path to freedom. While she was still connected to the representational in her beginnings with watercolor painting, abstraction then represented a real liberation for her – she could not get away from the small-scale narrowness of the numbers that her job as a financial accountant had imposed on her. But it was to take some time before she no longer wanted to do everything correctly in painting. Until she could finally let go.
Today it can, and how: red and pink, usually rather opponents, unite in Poschlep’s work on a format of 1.60 by 2.20 meters to form a powerful composition. The “Serres Separées” couldn’t be more opposite: Inspired by a newspaper photo, Poschlep used an interplay of pastel tones and black to explore the greenhouses that were set up along the canals in Amsterdam during the pandemic – as small, private restaurants. It is often like this: you read something, or see something, or smell something. Gradually, an idea forms in her head as to how the colors could interact this time. The hour of birth of a new picture, so to speak. And sometimes it’s even one that lets the viewer travel through time.