Anneliese Schrenk's favourite material is leather. She applies leather hides to the stretcher frame instead of the usual canvas textile. An organic material that is made durable by tanning and reveals its own structure in an aesthetic way.
The use of alien materials has been common practice in art production since Marcel Duchamp. The artist abandons the task of the creator and becomes a seeker of things in the world of everyday life, which he appropriates for himself. Leather is one such everyday object - whether as the skin of a living room couch or a car seat.
The size of the artwork is determined by the skin and its structure. A certain randomness inevitably resonates here, as the structure and texture can only be obtained from the existing piece of leather. And yet: at first glance, Schrenk's pictures look like paintings. Abstract paintings tending towards monochrome with sometimes subtle and then again strong colour nuances.
The artist works the picture surface with lines, furrows, scratches and even holes instead of classic painterly or graphic treatments, and despite the aggressive, hurtful markings, a certain calm can be felt in Schrenk's pictures. There is an exciting contrast between physical vulnerability, black leather, lightness and meditative, immaterial beauty. We often read the term brutality in the context of Anneliese Schrenk's work. The traces of time are inscribed on the skin, often also traces of injury. Schrenk sometimes works on her material by using fire, shoe paste or acid. In doing so, she examines the leather and its behaviour and accentuates - or ‘paints’ - on the image carrier. In a similar way, Lucio Fontana also artistically explored the skin of his paintings by making incisions in it, as did Alberto Burri, who wounded the epidermis with burn holes. Schrenk's works on paper are also tactile and material. Using the frottage technique, which was mainly practised by Max Ernst, she traces a wide variety of materials and structures, such as pebbles or paving stones. The graphite pencil takes over the unevenness of the underlying materials and reproduces them on the sheet.
Although Anneliese Schrenk only uses the cleaned ‘abstract’ skin without the underlying animal flesh layer for her picture production, the odour of the animal is still perceptible. In her more recent works, she gives the leather a body again. The artist washes the leather, dries it and gives it a hardened form through the drying process. Whether lying on the floor or hanging on the wall, the leather pieces are expansive, become organic and corporeal again or are reminiscent of crumpled fabrics. They swing into the room like baroque garment folds.