Gunda Timmel-Reitter’s grey-colourful foggy pictures tell stories – primarily dark Russian melancholies.
Despite her inexhaustibly positive character she portrays the apparent gravity, restlessness, egocentricity of everyday life. She interprets this introvert rush as escape from oneself. Prof. Dr. Wieland Schmied writes in a letter dated May 13, 2006: „The walking, hasty, escaping figures which you paint remind me of Henri Michaux’ escaping hordes...“
When Gunda Timmel-Reitter makes Jesus refuse his father’s order to die on the cross, the New Testament in its very essence takes a positive turn. Precisely thanks to this rebellion, this commitment to life, the man Jesus saves humanity. An abandoned, untouched cross is left behind as symbol. That’s how this cross in the middle of the darkness of God’s lonely anger succeeds in re-interpreting life BEFORE death in a constructive, positive manner.
Gunda Timmel-Reitter’s stories magically attract the observer in the same way as good literature does. Her pictures brim with inspiring, cloak-and-dagger fantasies. Even if her protagonists, her landscapes are elusive, on an emotional level they have immediate impact. Gunda Timmel-Reitter transcends in an abstract, reduced way not one concrete moment, but the dense aura of her stories which deal, beyond any virtual perfection, with the many layers and aspects of human imperfection.
Through the overlay, destruction and re-construction of various spaces and structures the material formation is not only the point of departure, but becomes a multi-faceted way to the open end of her stories. The pictures of Gunda Timmel-Reitter invite us to linger, to join the journey to another world.