Ruth Campau goes beyond the boundaries of traditional painting in her artistic practice. She takes distance from the two-dimensional format of the canvas toward more spatial, installational formats, experimenting with a whole range of materials. Ruth Campau refers to her work surface as potentially infinite while she endlessly repeats the same brush stroke with the objective of documenting her presence.

The Elegance of Ruth Campau’s Gesture

With a steady hand, Ruth Campau communicates the seductive qualities of the materials she is using. Ruth Campau’s gesture can be compared to that of a gymnast for its elegance and ease. However, a look behind the scenes would reveal Sisyphean labour. Ruth Campau’s every move is a trial of the body’s movement and it’s imperfection. Ruth Campau’s physical effort is put into making meters long panels that are then cut and formed into a composition of geometrical or colourful patterns.

Louise Steiwer on Ruth Campau’s monoprint series 'This Moment for You'

"This Moment for You captures different brush strokes or moments in time printed in different colours and put together into various compositions that together form a series of unique works. One can see how the same brush stroke changes character, expression and quality depending on the colour it is printed in; how a mark that can appear fierce and expressive in one colour seems delicate and calligraphic in another; and how different colours give the brushstroke an expression that can be opaque or transparent, flat or sculptural.

The moment in the series' title, This Moment for You, becomes thus somewhat ambiguous. It is a moment that captures the movement that lies behind the brushstroke, but also the stillness that comes after it: a kind of frozen state where the energetic moment is held back, transferred from the plate to the paper for posterity. This way, it can be passed on to us.”

Full text in Danish about Ruth Campau’s project

Ruth Campau, born 1955, Mors, Denmark. Lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Her recent exhibitions and site-specific installations include Sunset Boulevard, Bornholm Art Museum, Gudhjem (DK), Fielding, Caspar David Friedrich Zentrum, Greifswald (DE), long-term wall painting Something In The Way We Move for Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup (DK) and handwoven stories from the color fields make the blanket warm, site-specific installation for Hvidovre Hospital (DK). Ruth Campau’s work is included in the collections of Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj (DK), Malmö Art Museum (SE), Kastrupgårdsamlingen, Kastrup (DK) and Ny Carlsberg Foundation (DK) among others.

Ruth Campau is the recipient of the Danish Arts Foundation's Lifelong Honorary Grant and The Eckersberg Medal.

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A keen interest in materiality and texture of composition's painterly elements is a common ground in the artistic research of both Ruth Campau and Julie Sass.