From Saturday 7 November until Sunday 13 December 2020, PontArte, Maastricht.
"Pandemic Spring" is the title of Alke Schmidt's first solo exhibition at PontArte in Maastricht.
In collaboration with Tasneem Gallery (Berlin/Barcelona http://tasneemgallery.com/)) we showed 2 special projects in the gallery in the month of November of this London-based German artist. In addition to Pandemic Spring, Birds of America will be on display, a project made between 2010 and 2012.
Pandemic Spring (https://www.alkeschmidt.com/pandemic-spring)) is a work that originated during the 1st corona wave (from 1 April 2020 to 21 June, 2020).
Alke Schmidt has created a visual diary of the Coronavirus pandemic, inspired by the contrast between the stark depiction of the coronavirus charts of infections and deaths and the beautiful, life-affirming signs of spring that appeared everywhere in nature during this period.
Each work consists of a watercolor and pencil drawing (and a few collages) made on an A4 print of graphs showing the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in 8 countries on the day of the drawing.
The source of the charts is coronavirusgraphs.com (now offline), which uses data from John Hopkins CSSE.
In April, Alke made a daily drawing as part of 12o Collective's 30Works30Days challenge; thereafter she continued the diary on a weekly basis until June 21, the first day of summer.