For the painter Cornelia Bier, painting is the tool – her personal alphabet – to describe life. She sees her art as a homage to nature. Time and again, she succeeds in reducing the experience of nature to simple forms, colors, surfaces and structures that give the viewer the feeling of experiencing the pure energy of what is depicted. That’s right: “experiencing” and not just seeing. Cornelia Bier’s works have a special quality. They are not images, but pure content. It seems as if her pictures reveal what she sees, the original state, the original information about herself. She has an extraordinary talent for transforming the moment into the pure state of energy inherent in things. In doing so, she creates dense and airy compositions in seemingly inexhaustible combinations of brushstrokes, applications of paint, transparency or opacity.
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art decode – the energy thing
Formally, Cornelia Bier could at first glance be classified as belonging to the second current of abstract expressionism in the tradition of Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell or Mark Rothko. However, her work is equipped with a more far-reaching reference structure and is therefore based on a completely different foundation. While her painterly role models are completely absorbed in the effect of form and color and have completely abandoned materiality or any reference to reality, it is important to Cornelia Bier to maintain the reference to the original material – nature, life, feeling – and to re-establish it as a transformation. The result is a new pictorial order. We had the chance to watch her create this new order and were amazed by her concentrated “stage painting”. What looks like a single spontaneous flow of paint is in fact a rapid painting process, but with many pauses for reflection – painting over, taking back and adding to. “When painting, nothing comes naturally, it’s hard mental work until everything flows and appears light and energetic,” says Cornelia Bier herself. Cornelia Bier’s work can be divided into three large areas that exist side by side without any chronological sequence. These three groups are not so much characterized by different creative periods, but are rather defined by their formal criteria. We have dedicated one chapter each to “raumanzuege, kraftschichten and down to earth”.
Artist
Cornelia Bier
- Internationally Successful
- Traded internationally
Publications
art decode
163 ONE SIX THREE | art in print Verlag
Cornelia Bier at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolbermoor; 2022 © Cornelia Bier
content is painting, is energy
The artist in the exhibition “Wilde Mischung” at ArtSpace in Munich, 2022 © Cornelia Bier
space
cornelia beer
When you look at Cornelia Bier’s new works, the saying “Clothes make the man” inevitably comes to mind. Of course in a figurative sense, namely in the sense that it must mean “her works make rooms”. And in two ways. On the one hand, the pictures themselves create an astonishing spatial effect, but above all they give rooms, or even better the room in which they appear, a completely new dimension. They are like “raumanzuege” in the sense of the original proverb. Admittedly, this is a daring thought experiment – but sometimes thought experiments are an effective way of approaching reality. There are plenty of role models for this, from Plato to Einstein. Placing Cornelia Bier’s works in a random spatial context – a retouched installation world – reveals the power and immense potential of her works.
The artist in the exhibition “Wilde Mischung” at ArtSpace in Munich; 2022 © Cornelia Bier
space
cornelia beer
When you look at Cornelia Bier’s new works, the saying “Clothes make the man” inevitably comes to mind. Of course in a figurative sense, namely in the sense that it must mean “her works make rooms”. And in two ways. On the one hand, the pictures themselves create an astonishing spatial effect, but above all they give rooms, or even better the room in which they appear, a completely new dimension. They are like “raumanzuege” in the sense of the original proverb. Admittedly, this is a daring thought experiment – but sometimes thought experiments are an effective way of approaching reality. There are plenty of role models for this, from Plato to Einstein. Placing Cornelia Bier’s works in a random spatial context – a retouched installation world – reveals the power and immense potential of her works.
Works on paper by Cornelia Bier; 2023 © Cornelia Bier
“kraftschichten” in the studio – the works carry something orderly and a power of their own, which is transferred to the viewer; 2022 © Cornelia Bier
Insights into the studio
2023
That’s it, 155 x 115 cm, acrylic on canvas © konsum163
"The whole variety is only visible in art. Light, shadow and spaces in between.
cornelia beer
Thats’ it (excerpt), © konsum163
transformations
Rosarium, 155 x 110 cm, acrylic on canvas; 2021 © konsum163
the thing with the energy
2022
exhibitions and bio
2024
ONE (group exhibition), konsum163 – contemporary art gallery, Munich
NEUNZWO4 (group exhibition), konsum163 – contemporary art gallery, Munich
2023
All Melon (Group Exhibition), konsum163 – contemporary art gallery, Munich
Is German Art Blonde? (Group Exhibition), Galerie Tibaldi Arte Contemporanea, Rome
Contemporary Art Gallery Lumiére, Limassol, Cyprus “Three Kisses”
Strings and Strokes, konsum 163 – contemporary art gallery, Munich
Academy of Fine Arts Kolbermoor, Graduation from Lüpertz’s Master Class
Since 1997, various solo and group exhibitions:
Apt/Provence
Homburg/Saar
St. Wendel
Saarbrücken
Recklinghausen
Born in 1956 in Baden-Württemberg, the artist Cornelia Bier studied psychology for several semesters after graduating from high school, then decided to pursue training and further education to become an art therapist, earning a diploma. She worked for many years as a self-employed art therapist.
Her personal interest has always been in free-form painting. The desire to create her own work takes precedence. While creating her own artworks, Cornelia Bier continues her education by attending various workshops and courses.
- Sculpting and stone carving with Helga Mayer, student of Professor Leo Kornbrust
- Painting workshops with Gabriele Musebrink
- Painting workshops with Mila Plaickner
- Guest student in the master class of Professor Qi Yang
- Cornelia Bier has been a member of Professor Markus Lüpertz’s master class at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Kolbermoor since 2019
