3421 - MIRIAM CAHN

MIRIAM CAHN (Basel 1949–lives and works in Stampa) kirschbaum kurz vor der ernte. 1996. Oil on canvas. Verso titled, dated and signed: kirschbaum kurz vor der ernte 27.6.96 MM. 97 × 105 cm. Provenance: - Galerie Stampa, Basel. - Private collection, Switzerland, acquired from the above gallery in 1998. This work is recorded in the artist’s archive under no. 1803. In Miriam Cahn’s works, we encounter people, animals, objects and nature directly, without embellishment. People appear naked, faces frontal, forms simplified. The images shy away from neither vulnerability nor contradictions. What matters is not only the subject, but also the physical act of painting. The body is a central theme in Cahn’s work. Nudity is an existential condition. She depicts people without clothes, thereby questioning conventional ideas of how a body should look and how we view it. Her direct visual language also expresses a feminist stance that disregards prevailing ideals of beauty and subverts social norms. The figures are not always alone. Bodies may overlap, merge or become almost indistinguishable from one another. Alongside these are images consisting of only a few forms. An object becomes a large coloured area, a tree an expansive form. The subjects vary, but the directness of the painting remains. A tree need not stand for life, nor an animal for a human characteristic. Cahn resists fixed symbols and psychological clichés that reduce what is depicted to a particular meaning. Contours blur, forms dissolve or emerge distinctly. The application of paint remains visible, at times thin and restrained, at others dense and vigorous. The act of painting itself remains palpable. Cahn’s works depict people and the world around them without shying away from the ugly, the vulnerable or the banal. The images seek no consensus. They do not explain themselves. They are simply there. Direct. Immediate.