Die Liebe 2018 is an investigation of memory and a reflection on different styles throughout the history of art. It is a conceptual piece which overturns normal perspective. The artist develops the slowness of taking a photograph, enabling the viewer’s gaze to settle. She mixes creative styles and connects the complexity of contemporary art to the varied universe of the history of art.
In Brigitte’s work, the colour red does not clash with black and white, but instead absorbs them. Rubedo, a Latin word meaning redness, was one of the phases of the ancient practice of alchemy, and together with white, formed a pair of opposites, the union of which became known as the so-called “alchemical marriage”. This union is expressed in Die Liebe 2018 in a creative way, using a style which is both solemn and minimalist. The amarenas, red within the red, are two forms which come to the surface and join together.
Brigitte’s conceptual elaboration is an intense, expressive process into the material nature of the image. She is inspired by the flaming cloaks worn by van Eyck’s Madonnas, the red drapery in the background of Caravaggio’s Judith and Holofernes, and the fear of black swallowing up red in Rothko’s Four Darks in Red. However, her image also reflects the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity movement,with a polished objectivity, without any trickery but still just as strongly emotional. Brigitte herself admits to drawing on the depth of the transformed material surface of Burri’s Grande Rosso P. n. 18 (1964) and Rosso Plastica (1961), which resurfaces in the semiotic layering of Die Liebe 2018. However she is also inspired by the enlarged minimalism of Domenico Gnoli, which can be seen in the out-of-scale nature of the photographed object. The amarena has a double meaning: a union of the recollection of the subject and memories of childhood, as well as the sweetness of a fruit that like all our favourite meetings, contains the word “amore”, or love.