Martina Altschäfer. Above the Tree Line
New Drawings
1 November 2024 – 4 January 2025, Opening: 31 October, 6-9 p.m.

In a fourth solo exhibition, “Above the Tree Line”, Galerie Poll is showcasing new drawings by Martina Altschäfer, inspired by the astounding world of high mountain ranges.

In search of untouched, untamed nature, Martina Altschäfer is repeatedly drawn to the mountains. It is above the treeline – in a world of snow and ice, where it is so cold that not even shrubs can grow, and vegetation is nearly non-existent – that she develops the motifs for her drawings. Her works convey the domination of human beings by nature, yet they also tell of people and animals co-existing in and with the natural world. Myths and customs, too, frequently play a role.

The large-format drawings are based on photographs, mostly serving as aides-memoire for the impressions, moods, and settings she experienced during her mountain treks.

Her colourful mountain landscapes, created with coloured pencils and pastel chalk under brilliant sunlight and dramatic skies, shift between dream and reality. Their full complexity – the snowy, icy, and glacial landscapes blending imagination and reality – unfolds only upon deeper consideration.

In the drawing “Transhumance”, a herd of sheep grazes on a mountain ridge, surrounded by towering, snow-covered peaks. The sight of animals grazing at such dizzying heights seems surreal, yet this centuries-old practice of Alpine pasture migration is still used today.

In the drawing “Eiger”, Altschäfer evokes the grandeur of the nearly 4,000-meter-high peak in the Bernese Alps – whose north face draws climbers from across the globe – by rendering a minuscule human figure in its shadow. She shows him just before the arduous climb to the summit, lost in thought as he gazes at the trails snaking their way upwards in tight switchbacks, the various qualities of the mountain rock portrayed with virtuosic realism.

Martina Altschäfer constructs her landscapes with painstaking precision. Starting from a scaffolding of lines and vanishing points, she spends months working through each section, layer by layer, to complete her large-format compositions. Not a single line is placed without intention.

In parallel with her large drawings on paper, she creates small pastels and gouaches on black card, where she explores individual sections of her large compositions in a more painterly fashion. Here, the drawn line fades away as the smudging and blending of colours brings out greater pictorial depth, pulling the viewer deeply into the image.

In his catalogue essay, the writer Christoph Peters – a friend of the artist – trenchantly sums up what continually drives Martina Altschäfer in her creative process: “As soon as we venture into the mountains,” he writes, “we become wanderers, seekers, questioners, probers. Every step turns into a step into the unknown, hovering between bravery and fear, and the moment we lose our way, as the sun slips behind the high horizon, the voices of spirits in the grasses, branches, and cracks in the rocks will once again be heard. We will listen and tremble, listen and fall silent, fall silent and breathe, until an answer moves through us, either as an almost inaudible whisper or as a scream.”

Martina Altschäfer, born 1960 in Rüsselsheim, studied fine arts and German language and literature at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf). In 1991 she completed her studies as a master student of Prof. Konrad Klapheck. From 1990 to 1997 she taught drawing and painting at the Johannes Gutenberg University and at the University of Applied Sciences Wiesbaden (Fachhochschule Wiesbaden). Martina Altschäfer has received numerous scholarships and has been awarded several prizes. Works by the artist are held in private and public collections, including the collection of the Deutsche Bank, the Kunstmuseum Albstadt, the Gutenberg Museum Mainz, and the Landesmuseum Mainz. She lives and works in Rüsselsheim, where she has also published short stories and a novel with Mirabilis Verlag over the past several years.

Several of her drawings can be seen at the Mittelrhein Museum in Koblenz until 9th March 2025, in the exhibition “Dream Landscape – Nightmare Landscape”.