M. LeBlanc is proud to present ‘Word Of Honor’, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with German-born, Chicago-based painter Paula Kamps. ‘Word Of Honor’ brings together a series of paintings Kamps developed through the past year.
In 1800, early Romantic poet Novalis originated the concept of the Blue Flower (Die blaue Blume) in his novel fragment Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Kamps makes direct reference to this, quoting him in the work titled Who would trouble oneself about a flower? (2023). Novalis’ now famous poetic rumination about longing to see the blue flower became a principal recurring symbol in Romanticism repeated again over the last two centuries as a means for approaching the infinite, even if only in fantasy.
Of Kamps’ disparate lot, generous in its symbolism, predominant touchstones emerge in the band - the fortuneteller, the masked/performing individual, and the prevailing flower or bouquet. Like much of her painting over the past decade, the recent works extend the artist’s interest in addressing her medium as a fragile form, where veracity and representation are always in tension, and the painter’s truth hangs loosely on the viewer’s eyes.
Kamps calls three of the works ‘fortune telling machines.’ The title of one, Let the magic heart give your love rating (2023), comes from a quarter-operated love rating machine one may imagine at a town fair or old carnival hall. What are you? A Heartthrob? A Total Sucker? Kamps speaks about a need for oracles in general — the human craving for outside confirmation regarding our past lives, present relationships, and the status of the future. Even if these oracles are delivered mechanically or without reason, the prophecies fulfill themselves in the fortune seeker. When and how will I die? Is there such a thing as a blue flower? What is true, shouldn’t it be obvious – why do I seek signs in the outside world for its confirmation? Afterall, Amaryllis consulted the Oracle of Delphi before piercing her heart, where from her blood grew beautiful flowers, winning over Alteo, her star-crossed love.
Each tool of divination, flowers included, allows Kamps to represent surveyors of unconscious truth. When considering Kamps, the blue flower then might be treated as a conceptual motif that prods at the relationship between conscious witnessing and truthful representation. These are, of course, actors staged into Kamps’ persistent questioning of her medium – whether one can find truth or freedom or love at the highest fidelity of self-expression.
Text courtesy Taylor Harriett Payton.
Paula Kamps (German, b. 1990 in Cologne, DE) lives and works in Chicago. Kamps graduated as a Meisterschülerin from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2016, having studied under Tomma Abts and Elizabeth Peyton. Recent solo exhibitions include Cold Customs at eastcontemporary, Milan (2022); Shoot The Moon at Mou Projects, Hong Kong (2022); Rain Or Shine at M. LeBlanc, Chicago (2021); At The Pawn Shop at Sans titre, Paris (2021), and Ganze Tage In Den Bäumen at Kunstverein Heppenheim (2019). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at Galería Heinrich Ehrhardt, Madrid (2023); Good Weather, North Little Rock (2023); M. LeBlanc, Chicago (2022); David Zwirner’s Platform (online) (2022); Sans titre, Paris (2022); NÉVÉ, Los Angeles (2022); LVH, London (2021); Andrea Festa Fine Art, Rome (2021); SLICE, Ufer Studios, Berlin (2020); Amelchenko, New York (2019); Carbon12, Dubai (2018) and at Kunstverein Reutlingen (2018). She regularly publishes her poetry in the form of artist's books and was recently an artist-in-residence at Ox-Bow, MI after having attended residences in NYC (LESP, 2016), Italy (Viaggio in Sicilia VI, 2014/15) and France (Coco Collection, 2011).
