Prof. Franz Bernhard Weißhaar, München-Landsberg:Making the FIGURATVE PAINTINGS of Eva Bur am Orde to speak to you, requires first of all to talk and write about what is not directly part of paintings. This may be irritating, but has to be permitted to gradually find the approach to the work of the artist and her hermeneutical images.Material and graspEva Bur am Orde´s canvas surfaces require solid frames for support and static. This transforms her paintings into objects that demand space. The tactile feel of canvas, wood or paper is self-ensuring and allows to define the emotions that form the artist’s dialog with the material. All this already was visable during her university times at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, as she submitted works to the final diploma exhibition.Her relationship to painting is not influenced by traditional painting techniques, formulas and role models, but it is always put on stage new again. The use of the material paint, pigments, binders, oil, varnishes or lacquers is literally palpable and ‘colour understanding’. Taking colours with fingers and pressing canvases, coating, smearing, pushing and rubbing is really happening when Eva Bur am Orde places innumerable circles, loops, swirls, meanders, bends, points onto the canvas and its edges.She answered the curious question about - how she paints, her technique, craftsmanship, her thoughtfulness or dynamics as she works in her studio with:It all is as well uncontrolled and controlled gesture.Upon further questioning, for instance about how she is finding her themes or her striving for ideas for images, different versions and sketches, the artist just said: I have a vision and I work fast.Such a vision has not to be understood immediately in all details of its linear composition and colour dramaturgy, because detailed drawings exist, applied to canvases, ready for use in various paintings.The artist’s own children are an important part in her pool of images, once in a while worked over and transformed into multi-layered artworks.Shadows as shapes, coloured linesSome of the paintings operate by opposing the darkness in shaded areas with the light in other parts of the image by giving the shadows defined shapes and allowing three dimesuality.Drawn lines define volumes that assist our perception, and force the eye of the beholder, tricked through the use of ornaments to a two-dimensional approach, one of the claim for abstraction and objectivity since the 20th century.The paintings referred to (e.g. “The Pleasure”, “Fear II”, ”Faith, Hope, Love”) are two-layered – in other words – consist of two planes:A zone covered with elements of ornaments works as two dimensional lower area another linear figuration signals as upper ‘three dimensional one’ the upper plane.The signal ‘being three dimensional’ is not achieved by the painter through use of traditional shadings, but by use of harsh and transition free contours of bright white and black shadows.The three dimensional picture detail might be understood as secured in an ornamental cosmos, being convincing on close observation.Surfaces covered by ornamentsSignatures and key functions in the work of Eva Bur am Orde are experiments with images or newly developed design elements during her various periods. Number one amongst all are surfaces filled with small ornaments. Opposing Adolf Loos and his parole, published in an essay in 1908, “Ornament and Crime”, Eva Bur am Orde paints pictures with freely formed, mostly not clearly defined circles, which - separated or densely packed cover parts of the surface. The flickering ciphers, restless, whether it is harshly defined or fuzzy, pasty or just vague in a deeper layer of paint – she judges it all and catches in the grids of classical rhombi flower children from outer space. As a protection against questions, criticism, and anger the cipher of love and playfullness is being put forward.The open workCiphers suggest and open paths. Eva Bur am Orde shows in her work a picture of the world covered with her sprinkles of ciphers. In her transformation into images she copes with faith and the past as she translates her experience into a message for herself, groups and society.
