Federica Schiavo Gallery is pleased to present On Leaning, an exhibition of new works by Svenja Deininger.
Deininger’s painterly practice unfolds as an open-ended process, grounded in accumulation, stratification, and the continual recalibration of patterns, tones, forms, and visual memories. Created without preparatory drawings, her canvases take shape slowly, through attempts, revisions, and reconsiderations. Yet the final image retains no visible trace of this prolonged labour: the surfaces appear smooth and quiet, and only at the edges of the canvas does the complexity of the process begin to emerge.
At the core of her poetics lies the tension between what is revealed and what remains concealed. Deininger builds her paintings through successive layers, superimposing colour without ever fully erasing what came before; earlier traces continue to act beneath the surface as a form of visual and chromatic memory. The result is a mode of painting shaped equally by accumulation and subtraction, in which raw linen, matte passages, and denser areas coexist in a subtle balance of light, depth, and texture.
Her compositions inhabit an intermediate space between abstraction and figuration. Curves, vertical lines, and horizontal planes evoke bodies, architecture, and landscapes without ever fully defining them, allowing the viewer, through memory and sensibility, to complete the image.
