Cornelia Schleime
She grew up under the dictatorship of a "gesetztes Wir" (predefined collective or "We") she had learned very early to retract from the coercions and imputations of a prescribed happiness.
Rather early she dreamed of going to Morocco like August Macke, in order to "meet my self in the faraway lands, to dive into the opium of unfettered suns."
She always wanted to be a traveller and visit the great museums of the world, these power stations of concentrated energy, to meet the Giottos, Masaccios, van Eycks, Vermeers, Manets and Turners there, and "maybe only to stand only once in front of a small watercolour by William Blake.
"[5] In her undergraduate days, Schleime belonged to a group of young artists who formed a counter-movement to official GDR art policy.
Schleime began her exploration of performance art with works such as a "Raum des Dichters" (Room of the Poet) in the autumn of 1979 as part of this.
[1] The group refused to exhibit conventional art as defined by the authorities in the GDR and developed a project of working on a topical issue relevant to their generation.
They agreed on a proposal by Michael Freudenberg to choose the theme of doors, an associative response to being in a country enclosed by a wall.
Michael Freudenberg, Monika Hanske, Volker Henze, Ralf Kerbach, Helge Leiberg, Reinhard Sandner, Cornelia Schleime and Karla Woisnitza each created an installation, while Thomas Wetzel organised four outdoor actions relating to the theme.
The exhibition attracted attention from the general public, with A. R. Penck claiming that it represented “the beginning of victory over false consciousness (falsches Bewußtsein)!”.
"[8] Cornelia Schleime and Ralf Kerbach met at the Dresden University of Fine Arts and created the art-punk band Zwitschermaschine, or "Twittering".
After a failed art exhibition in the Radeburg Heimatmuseum, organized by Michael Rom, they decided to make music together.
The band lasted from 1979 to 1983, when they managed to release a split album with Schleim-Keim with the title DDR von unten (GDR from below).
The band name resulted either from Ralf Kerbach's predilection for Paul Klee's homonymous picture, or from a performance of Luis Buñuel's film An Andalusian dog.
"[8] After graduating, she moved from University in Dresden back to East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg, where she came into contact with the civil rights movement and Sascha Anderson, a close friend of hers who was later revealed to be part of the Stasi that was spying on her.
[3] Schleime was then part of the MOMA PS1's National and International Studio Program Exhibition from 1990 to 1991 (March 3–March 24, 1991)[10] on a DAAD scholarship.
[7] While in school she often visited the Sächsische Landesbibliothek (Saxonian County Library) where she discovered Arnulf Rainer, Cy Twombly, Francis Bacon.
She experimented with coffee-grounds and sand bound by glue, a technique she still uses today to break up the even surface, painting by means of scratching and scarring and making marks.
On the inception of this she says "There was a text in my Stasi file that read as follows: “Beyond these investigations, the ABV had no other information because Schleime behaved very inconspicuously.” So I thought: I'll satirize that.
I bought a wig, wove hemp into it and lengthened it to four meters or so, attached a pram to the back and found out where Sascha Anderson's commanding officer's house was.
Schleime's painting style is inspired by artists that were a strong influence in her classical studies such as Bacon and Balthus, Monet, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh.
Sources of inspiration are glossy magazines, reproductions of all kinds, but also personal photographs or snapshots found at flea markets.
Through the intuitive act of drawing or painting, she turns those she depicts into something creative of her own, projecting them in new roles, symbolically emphasising the poses encountered or highlighting aspects with a touch of fantasy and irony.
