Melbourne, 8 Feb 2022 — 26 Feb 2022

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Water & Ice
- Jörg Schmeisser

Internationally renowned artist/printmaker Jörg Schmeisser (1942 – 2012) was born in Germany and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. His masterfully detailed and expressionistic etchings and drawings were the artist’s investigations into vast regions across the world. Jörg Schmeisser traveled to Antarctica on the icebreaker Aurora Australis in 1998. The result was a series of works — etchings, drawings, and paintings — some of the most beautiful images he created, that became a major touring exhibition showing in Kyoto, Tokyo and Yokohama. They explored the majesty and uncanny beauty of the frozen continent, the immensity of nature and the human imagination when confronted by it. In this series of work, Jörg employed various media to explore shape, outline and colour in a world of ‘other’ beauty. ‘Water & Ice’ showcases a curated selection of Schmeisser’s Antarctic inspired work, from the Estate.
“Over the years my interest has changed, I suppose, from recording what I see to responding to it, though it is often difficult to make the distinction. This response to what is in front of me leads to images which are as much about me as about the motive of creating. I think in that respect the iceberg series is for me like entering a new room, a room that is cold but feels right. It was summer in Antarctica and not as cold as one might think. The fact that the sea was not frozen meant that it was above minus 4 degrees. All icebergs are fresh water and they can be hundreds of kilometres long, or much smaller, strangely shaped, in colours ranging from emerald green to light cobalt blue or an exquisite white. The evening light there is particularly beautiful. The white changes to a yellow-orange, and the shadows become purple and violet. Ice that is up to 4,000 meters thick weighs on the continent with an eloquent silence. I sometimes write diary entries into the copperplate of my etchings; thoughts and depictions of what I find around me at a particular time. Text and image present specific and different information, each in their own way. There is so much that is nonvisual around one, yet part of the true impression of a place and time.” 
– Jorg Schmeisser in conversation with Roger Pulvers ‘An artist in a land of ice and snow,’ The Japan Times, 29 October 2003
Jörg Schmeisser
Jörg Schmeisser
Naturalist and autobiographical printmaker and draughtsman Jörg Schmeisser was born in Germany in 1942 and …
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