Installation view BAK, Swiss Art Awards 2023 | Photo: Gina Folly
Natacha Donzé receives this year's Swiss Art Award from the Federal Office of Culture (BAK) at the opening of Art Basel.
Natacha Donzé’s painting focuses on the surface of the image in a unique and visually challenging way. She appeals to a seeing eye and is thus part of a tradition that was important to the development of colour field painting and can be traced back to early Modernism. Donzé treats the canvas as a membrane that is set into optical vibration through colour. In this way, she creates an imaginary and usually dimensionless space of strong and intense colour. At the same time, Donzé allows the canvas to be a space for representation. Embedded into this coloured space are figural motifs, borrowed images and also technical ones, such as microscopic views and x-rays, which we can only see thanks to imaging techniques that show what is invisible to the naked eye. In her painting, Donzé interlaces different orders and explores the depth of the image surface. This results in paintings of great sensual intensity.
