Sigrid von Lintig (Duisburg, 1965) studied graphics and design at the University of Applied Sciences in Aachen. She then took a course in Free Painting at the Academy of Düsseldorf. Her work has already been featured in several leading exhibitions in Germany and was shown at the Chamber Gallery in New York in 2017. In 2018, she was selected for Kunstenfestival Watou in conjunction with Paul Snoeck’s poem “A Swimmer is a Horseman.

 

“Sigrid von Lintig examines swimmers and divers in a swimming pool. As a viewer, you see the movements of men, women and children through the transparent water from a bird’s eye view. Although a person is always depicted centrally on the canvas, this model merely embodies the abstract. The water plays the leading role in all these works and its realistic depiction deceives, as it were, the eye of the viewer. In her Schwimmer series, the artist does not attribute any purifying, cleansing or other symbolic value to water. Unlike in much other art, the presence of water in von Lintig’s work is reassuring rather than disturbing. The dynamics of the water grab the viewer’s gaze, and the reflection of the light constantly shapes and reshapes the image. Sigrid von Lintig’s paintings are accessible but on a deeper reading prove to be multi-layered. Combined with the artist’s craft skills and carefully chosen staging, the works, in all their apparent simplicity, release a great deal of feeling. Not least, a longing for freedom and weightlessness (after all, a swimmer loses 90% of body weight in water). With the head under water, we are closed off from the outside world and, as if in a cocoon, we are for a moment completely at our own mercy.”

(text Catalogue Watou 2018)