Anna Nero

Anna Nero’s work deals with different modalities of painting and the possibilities of image-making and representation. In her process, she constantly crosses paths between strict and sleek geometrical forms and bold, playful brush strokes. Those two are the poles between which her paintings oscillate – constructed and intuitive, strict and playful. Most paintings start with systematic grids and patterns, which are overpainted by gestures and forms in the following process. The grid makes it easier for her to ‘place’ objects or gestures on the canvas, and it is an operating, organizing system as well as an element in the painting itself.

Nero is interested in the question of when and whether paint becomes object or space. Resulting from this, the material becomes the subject of her work rather than remaining a tool only. Brush strokes or thick worms of paint pressed directly from the tube develop their own ‘life’ or ‘agenda’, which she supports by giving her paintings titles like ‘Strokes Trapped in A Grid’ or ‘Hostel’. It also makes it obvious that her work has a humorist and ironic side. She likes to mix, sample and quote artists throughout art history in a commonly postmodern manner, but always with a playful wink of the eye.

Anna Nero received her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig in 2015, followed by post-graduate studies with professor Heribert C. Ottersbach. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in the United States at Long Story Short, NYC (formerly known as Another Place, NYC), Germany, and Italy, and in several group exhibitions across Europe, Asia, and North America. She co-runs the Frankfurt based project and exhibition space MARS. In 2022 she was a guest professor at the Art Academy Mainz, Germany. Her work is in private and public collections in Italy, Germany, Spain, and the US, including the G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig, Germany; the Museum of Fine Art Leipzig, Germany; the Public Art collection of the State of Saxony; the Sammlung Zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (German National Art Collection); and the public art collection of the City of Frankfurt, Germany; Hudson Valley MOCA, Peekskill, NY, amongst others.

Photograph by Laura Brichta.

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