DP ART EXHIBITION - Maxine Dohrmann

Maxine Dohrmann

Restless

Acrylic on canvas

40 cm x 40 cm

I’m constantly moving and thinking of my past while navigating my present. This triptych of my memory describes my frantic grasping of every detail I can, to remember my childhood in the city. The feeling of anxiety, of losing my former home, goes across and beyond a single canvas. It is uncontrollable and my experiences are now intangible. I long to adventure the busy streets again, but I can now only remember the feeling of standing in the deafening chaos.

My Playground

Digital collage using Pixlr and Preview printed on acrylic glass / 60 cm x 40 cm

Being a kid, I felt invincible, nothing stood in my way. Not even the vast atmosphere of the city. I wonder how I would feel standing next to those intimidating buildings once more, but in my memory they are miniature and transparent.

I realise now how compressed and distorted my childhood past has become. In my mind, NYC’s architecture still opens up endless possibilities, but I will never experience it through my childhood’s naive and innocent perspective again, like I did so many years ago.

Messy Room

Watercolour and black pen on paper

20 cm x 20 cm

New York City is messy and chaotic, just like I can remember my childhood room often being. Toys, clothes, and homework would pervade the room, as this series depicts with a view from above the floor of my space. A play with this perspective expresses how the city’s tumultuous atmosphere can also be seen as productive. I was exposed to diverse types of people, cultures, languages and beliefs all living uniquely yet in unity in the same city.

Where Will I Go?

Acrylic paint on canvas

40 cm x 40 cm

As a child, New York City appeared vibrant, dynamic and full of possibilities that I could grasp and make mine. While we as humans are interconnected, our paths in life are different. We take separate opportunities to create unique memories and experiences, even though we call the same place home. The single lines are painted so that they pass by each other, intertwine, move in different directions and disappear into the pink abyss, to represent the depth of the individual’s journey.

Allegro

Acrylic paint on canvas

80 cm x 60 cm

When reminiscing about the city, I have many childhood memories of myself walking to get to my ballet class. I remember feeling the excitement of being able to dance, and this emotion was reflected back on the high skyscrapers, vivid lights and busy streets of NYC. Both the city and allegro in ballet are filled with high speed movement, and rhythm, making their elements blurred and almost blended together, similar to how my mind remembers individual distant memories of

these experiences.

Foundations

Watercolour and black ink on canvas

120 cm x 80 cm

The first years of a child are crucial to their development. I learnt to write, read, talk, and count, became a sister, made my first friends and established my identity in one place: NYC. These building blocks of my childhood are congruent with the city’s architecture. Each building represents one singular memory that was built to form the wonderful childhood that I had. Even though many memories are melting and slipping away, the experiences are still pivotal to my current reality.

Interrupting

Acrylic paint on canvas

100 cm x 70 cm

In my mind, my sole memories of the city’s urban environment can be divided into sharp geometric shapes creating pieces of a compressed puzzle forming one childhood. With references to Vorticism, the jagged experiences have turned into impatient stories, waiting to be told and are fighting to not be forgotten. Some of these memories have more and some less of an importance to me and my life, communicated through the bigger and smaller shapes barging into each other.

Sound pollution

Acrylic paint and gold leaf metal on canvas

120 cm x 80 cm

New York City can make you feel like there is too much noise in too little space, compelling me to escape it.

There were times where I felt overwhelmed and felt the city’s heavy weight of its frantic and crowded nature.

This artwork observes the city from afar at the bottom of the Hudson River, as similarly, submerging into the water of my bathtub was the only way to drown out the claustrophobic uproar of sounds that constantly surrounded my daily life.

Surrounded

Acrylic paint on canvas

70 cm x 50 cm

My memories of the city are sometimes polluted with negative thoughts. New York City can be dangerous, making it difficult for a child to experience freedom and independence, however the playgrounds were places where I could explore and be creative.

When playing, I often wanted to escape the grey skyscrapers, traffic-jammed streets and dirty smoke overpowering the little nature there was in the city. This strong industrial and concrete feeling manifested isolation and gloom at times.

Curatorial Rationale

The theme of my exhibition surrounds my childhood memories of the city. I was born in New York City and called it my home for the first eight years of my life. Naturally, it left countless lasting impressions on my childhood, and who I am today. Through my artworks, I expressed my recollection of NYC’s fascinating architecture, diverse cultures, vibrant atmosphere, and its connections to my emotions and experiences, depicted through the lens of both my childhood and current self. With my work, I wanted to communicate an intimate part of my mind, and therefore illustrated both the negative and positive memories I have of my childhood in the city. Furthermore, I aimed to show how with time, the details of my memories have changed from the original experiences due to distance, and how each individual memory has contributed to my growth and development to collectively shape my childhood. Throughout my process I was influenced by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Cecily Brown and David Bomberg and used their art styles and themes as an inspiration to my work.

While developing my artworks for my exhibition, I wanted to make sure that it reflected a realistic and accurate representation of my childhood, emotions, and memories of the city. Therefore I included artworks that exhibited occurrences where I felt vulnerable, or anxious such as in my artwork Sound Pollution, that details how as a child, I would sometimes become overwhelmed with the countless and relentless influx of noise that would pursue my daily life. Contrastingly, I celebrated the busy, chaotic and opportunity-filled climate that NYC offered in some of my other artworks, as I also had many positive experiences. This is conveyed through Allegro, where I remember the excitement and anticipation of walking through the streets of the city to get to my ballet class. At those times I would embrace the crowded streets, towering skyscrapers and fast-paced environment.

The materials I used for my artworks were all aimed to further depict my memories of the city. In My Playground, I created a digital collage printed on acrylic glass, to express the artificiality and transparency of my memories as they have become distorted and distant over time. The artworks painted with acrylic paint such as Restless, Where Will I Go?, Surrounded and Interrupting, aim to show how likewise to acrylic paint being soluble with water, which changes the consistency and colour vibrancy of the paint, the separation from the city has also influenced my memories to change from their original state of events. Watercolour was used in my artworks such as Messy Room and Foundations, to compare the time of how fast paint dries, to the city giving me an immediate lasting impression every single day.

The arrangement of my artworks play with perspective, as when entering the room the exhibition first only reveals my two largest artworks on the right and left of the board. This

should show the immediate contrast of my emotions towards the city as one artwork is positive and welcomes the city (Foundations), while the other is negative and rejects it (Sound Pollution). When the viewer walks further into my exhibition and changes their position, they are greeted with a full board of the rest of my artworks in between the two larger ones, that depict a range of emotions, and detail how memories are intricate and inevitably will blend both the good and bad together. My positive artworks are collected at the left side of the board where the corner of it moves outwards to the brighter side of the exhibition, while the negative artworks surround the corner going inwards and getting darker. This should help the viewer physically feel the contrasting feelings of being in the city of both being uplifted, open and extroverted, to being anxious, claustrophobic and introverted. Messy Room also specifically investigates perspective and is in the middle of my exhibition to depict how depending on my perspective, my experiences can be remembered as positive or negative. I decided to have my artworks at different heights so people of all ages and heights can observe my exhibition, which reflects my growing up from being a young child to a young adult.

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