Visit to Susanne A. Schalz’ studio. The first part

Gladbeck magazine, Talstrasse 11. Studio visit

Gladbeck, Talstrasse 11. I’m visiting the “MAGAZIN Gladbeck”, Susanne A. Schalz, an artist who pulls many colourful strings at the same time. In short, one blog article is not enough here. That’s why there will be two. Here comes the first part.
Susanne A. Schalz’ studio “Pott in Farbe“ (=„colour pot“. Of note: „Pott“ is also a colloquial term for the entire Ruhr coal mining area) is located in the middle of the Ruhr area, and for her, this is exactly the right place to be.) For the artist, the Ruhr area is actually right in the middle of her heart, and it is a central theme that runs through her work like a “red thread”, no, like a colourful thread, indeed.

In fact, the old “Magazin”, a former warehouse and functional building of the colliery and harbour railway of 1914, originally looked quite different. A large hall, with an atrium and a tour on the first floor. When Susanne A. Schalz saw it for the first time, it was all grey, dusty, with a lot of shelves (what are you supposed to put on all those shelves?!), the old warehouse was certainly functional, but not the lively studio and event location that Susanne A. Schalz has established here.

Susanne A. Schalz has preserved the character of the building, she has kept the functional and industrial atmosphere, but has transformed the all the grey with a lot of colour. In the meantime it has become bright, spacious and colourful. As a result, there is plenty of space for art, music, dance and theatre. And for the diverse events that take place here. Therefore, Susanne A. Schalz calls her magazine a “freelance space”. And that’s right. The surroundings inspire the diverse ideas and concepts that take shape here, and that are literally “put on stage”.

The Ruhr area in spring

My visit to Susanne A. Schalz’ studio has been on my mind for quite a long time, especially since her works are actually exhibited in our hotel since the end of last year. And it is one of those first sunny spring days when I set off to visit her at “MAGAZIN Gladbeck”. Across the Ruhr industrial area, towards Essen and Oberhausen. Perfect day light, a cold day, but radiant and bright, with a “touch of spring” in the air, even if it is still quite fresh outside.

Perfect light for an unusual place that actually radiates color, not only because there are colorful chairs, with lots of pillows and blankets, and because the high walls are covered with colorful pictures. Susanne A. Schalz has a lot of space here, also for her really large-format Ruhr district views and her “coal down” abstractions. High-raising winding towers and stocky collieries, colourful malstroms and multicoloured colour explosions.

Here and there on the walls there are still a few remnants of her “Bergfrei” installation, with which Susanne A. Schalz ended the last year. Her multimedia reflection on the “coal closure”. Coal pieces from every single coal mine in the Ruhr area that are mounted on coloured plates, for example. Or brightly overpainted “dead rock”, excavated material without “use”. The huge iron basket, filled with colourfully painted miner’s clothes, that was hung under the ceiling in the atrium in December. Illuminated with black light, “Bergfrei” was a very special colour spectacle in the darkness of the evening, which completely occupied the entire “MAGAZIN”. The end of the coal mining era? Not at all dull and gloomy, but vivid and lively, with lots of energy and brightly coloured.

“Pott in Farbe”. Even coal mining and industrial dust gets a touch of color here.

The coal, which the Ruhr industrial area does stand for, is in fact found as material not only in her figurative paintings of the industrial Ruhr landscapes, but also in her abstract paintings as well. As fine dust, often at the bottom of her layered pictures, recognizable only “at second glance,“ like a the mere breath of a trace, definitely present, but not dominant. Sometimes also together with a hint of „dead rock”, excavated material, or some of the grey industrial dust found in every corner of the old “Gladbeck Magazine” before Susanne A. Schalz took over the large building three years ago and transformed it with a lot of energy into her art space.

Because Susanne A. Schalz carefully stored this dust of the hundred-year-old building, which in thick layers was not lying alone on the struts under the ceiling. In small glasses, as well as the „dead rock“, excavated material of the region. Both are a precious ingredient for many of her paintings. And if „dead rock” in mining is actually defined as the “layers of rock (that) cover the useful material”, then for Susanne A. Schalz it is precisely this kind of material that is extraordinarily useful. For it becomes a substantial element with which her paintings actually “locates” themselves physically in the Ruhr area.

Susanne A. Schalz, for example, has not only portrayed all the winding towers in the Ruhr area, but also all the other (industrial) monuments in the region. She could also be woken up at 3.00 a.m. and be asked to do such a painting, she says and smiles. She could do each of these motifs in her memory, knows every single colliery down to the last corner, paints every conveyor system with every striking detail. Ewald colliery in Herten, Pluto Wanne-Eickel colliery, the machine hall or Graf Moltke in Gladbeck, Haniel in Bottrop, Nordstern colliery in Gelsenkirchen, Holland colliery in Bottrop. The Gasometer in Oberhausen or the Villa Hügel. This list is anything but complete. Susanne A. Schalz has brought all these places in the district on canvas. Really all of them.

The Ruhr area is colourful. And in motion, too

The „frame” that holds the art of Susanne A. Schalz together, is certainly the colour. The majority of her works are highly colour-intensive, luminous, sometimes even garish. On the one hand, there are her figurative paintings, district views and travel impressions, landscapes in self-confident tones, architecture painted with a strong brushstroke. Here, Susanne A. Schalz naturally feels obliged to the motif. The place must remain recognizable and identifiable, and this it what in turn controls the result of the work. And it is the moment of clear recognition that defines the point, so to speak, when exactly such a work will be finished. And when it feels “right”.

On the other hand, there are her abstractions, such as the works from the series “coal down”. And here Susanne A. Schalz’s working process is a completely different one, becoming a spontaneous experiment with an uncertain outcome. The ground for the painting is first on the floor, then at some point it also comes to the wall, as soon as an “above” and a “below” have become apparent. Susanne A. Schalz first works on the floor, being all around the canvas.

She lets the paint drip, spray and flow. The paint explodes, forming streaks. Susanne A. Schalz mixes colours with different compositions, scatters pure pigments and charcoal into them, she sprays, layers, fills, dissolves surfaces again with water, so that the structure bursts open in some places because the different “ingredients” repel each other. Perforated plates or even a piece of textile lace with a flower ornament become a stencil for a wafer-thin ornament that floats in the midst of the colour swirls. Just like her small logo, a stylized winding tower that dances like a small monogram through the color pegs. In addition, she needs music at work, very loud, such as some Uplifting Trance by Blank & Jones.

When is such an abstract work finished? Actually, this is also a rather associative process. At some point, when the work is hanging on the wall and feels “close to completion”, Susanne A. Schalz takes a photo. And then she looks at her work on the computer screen. This gives her the necessary distance to the work. Immediately, meaning without this intermediate screen, she simply can’t make the “Is finished now” decision in this phase. Otherwise she would simply be too close, or be even almost “inside” her picture. With the technical detour she succeeds in taking the necessary step back and looking at all the bundled energy from a distance.

“Are there also people in your art?”

“What about people? Are there any people in your art?” I ask her. Yes, there are, but not in the Ruhr area pictures. Of course, there are no people in her abstract pictures, and the landscapes and views of the district are also deserted. But that doesn’t mean that there are no people in Susanne A. Schalz’ works in general. However, Susanne A. Schalz’ pictures with humans have a completely different meaning. And most of them are not to be looked at in public, at least not for a long time, perhaps for an exhibition, but they are on Susanne’s private walls, at home. She doesn’t want to separate herself from these works. And for a public exhibition? With effort, and not for long. They are very personal, too private, almost like a part of her that becomes a kind of painful gap if she were to part with them.

Susanne A. Schalz’ human images are usually created for a very special occasion, which in consequence became an impulse for her to paint. Events that hit their heart, excite her, make her angry. For example the terrorist attack on the French satire magazine “Charlie Hebdo”, which for her turns into the image of a fighting Marianne with a big pen in her fist. Or thousands of people drowning as they flee across the sea. “Life vest under your seat” is the title of her work. The idea for this picture came to her when she was sitting in an airplane and flying over the sea. She reads this safety notice and suddenly has a stranded boat in her head that she has to paint. With a skeleton in front of it. A run-down boat in which there were no safety vests for the passengers.

Together with Marianne of “Charlie”, the picture of the boat had been exhibited in the Düsseldorf Landtag as part of a solo exhibition in 2015. So, at least for a certain time, those were to be seen in public eye, no longer just on private premises, so to say.

Many of these highly personal works are political, and they are not cheerful or light-footed at all. Some of them almost resemble a bitter caricature in style. Like, for example, a picture on the Brexit that shows the Big Ben Tower on a small boat heading towards the continent. This picture is more than two years old, by the way, and painted on a torn piece of cardboard. It looks a bit battered at the edges, almost like a parcel on a long, rather arduous journey.

And the working process? Is impulsive and reflective at the same time

As spontaneous and impulsive, as emphatic as Susanne A. Schalz brings colour to the canvas, and as decisive and determined as she is, when it comes to implementing her projects, the artist is a planned, reflected and structured person. From the first idea to the implementation and completion of her larger projects and series of works, it can take two years.

On the side, on the floor in the atrium, there are many pieces of a loose dance floor. Remains of Pina Bausch’s dance floor, to be exact. With the dancers’ notes on their performances in London and Paris. In fact, the dancers of the international Pina Bausch ensemble from Wuppertal have also been with Susanne A. Schalz in the “Magazin”. With a furious dance spectacle, “out of the series”. A danced improvisation with big and small gestures, which included the whole building with its atrium and the tour on the first floor. Susanne A. Schalz will definitely create something out of the discarded dance floor. This floor will probably become a painting ground. And it will probably be something about dance. One will see. The material gives here the inspiration. Quasi the vanguard for a project of tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

And the project of today?

We are sitting with Susanne A. Schalz in the sunlit atrium of her „MAGAZIN”, with a view of all the pictures and we enjoy a pot of hot tea, together with cookies from Switzerland. From Switzerland, like all the new colours she has just bought. For her current concept: “SkulptRuhr”. Sculpture and Ruhr.

“SkulptRuhr” is a play on words, a tongue twister, of course extremely colourful, and it is Susanne A. Schalz’ very latest project. And quite elaborate. That’s why there’s going to be a separate blog entry for „SkulptRuhr” soon, as the second part of my studio visit. So, “Stay tuned!” Can you still say that in times of Netflix and endless streaming? Probably not. Anyway, you know what is meant. To be continued next week.