Dorothea von Elbe
The balance of Nature
These are times of calmness and discernment. The present time prioritizes the essential and converges towards the true identity of things. Dorothea von Elbe’s relationship with Galería Rafael Ortiz dates back to 1985, although the American artist based in Cordoba began working with us shortly before that, through Galería Melchor.
After several individual exhibitions held in our space, we have considered it appropriate to broaden the vision of her work and to serenely reflect on it. Therefore, we propose the factor of simultaneity that implies the retrospective review, showing works made in different years and on different supports. Dorothea von Elbe is characterized by her containment and self-absorption, as well as a high level of commitment to her work. The artist opts for discerning the strident noises around us, because the story of the world rests on the balance of nature.
Extraordinarily attentive and selective, the motifs to be painted, drawn or sculpted must be empty of grandiloquent connotations because what appears to be anodyne reaches its splendour when it is singularized. This paradoxical game is determined by the characteristic morphologies of the chosen subjects, as it happens with the Leucophyta brownii, a plant which is characterized by the convoluted complexity of its tiny twisted branches, or the grayish and languid vision of the Senecio cineraria, that we find in his most recent works.
The pulse of our time leads us towards dispossession. Dorothea von Elbe’s work is offered to us in solidarity with this desire because, as indicated in the commentary on her previous exhibition, “von Elbe intends to capture an instance and document it. The pieces express the paradoxical through the obvious. They explain the simplicity of the mechanisms of nature by means of highly refined expressive techniques”.