Memories

The painting installation Memories was created through the accumulation and scraping away of layers of paint. According to Sirje Runge, the work is a byproduct of her long career as a painter: over 21 years, she used the remaining oil paints layer by layer on this pyramid. Thus, the piece has witnessed and shared its material with other works in the series such as Landscape, Object, Catastrophe, Shadows, Architektons, Illusion, and others. In 2001, Runge delved into the accumulated layers of paint and scraped out the visible forms and shadows that appear in the piece.
Since the 1980s, Runge’s work has shifted from regular and orderly geometric abstraction to a colour-sensitive approach with a minimalist expression. Consequently, Memories is a piece that reflects the various stages of the artist’s creative process while resisting categorisation. Runge has stated that Memories embodies time, the genesis of things and self-manifestation. The intriguing aspect in the context of this exhibition is the unusually prolonged working process of the piece, its state of being neither “here” nor “there” in Runge’s body of work, and its metaphorical translation into questions of time and space.