Anke Weyer: Haricots Verts

Megan Mulrooney is pleased to present Haricots Verts, an exhibition of new paintings—large-scale explorations of the collision with color and form—by New York-based artist Anke Weyer, on view from November 8 to December 31, 2024.

Each canvas is an index of the artist’s improvisatory engagement with it: thick lines, splatters, and smudges made with brushes, hands, blades, and rags abound throughout the exhibition. Weyer’s process is deeply physical, involving layering, scraping, and reworking paint to create textured surfaces. These layered gestures preserve traces of her presence, evoking the raw act of painting itself and resulting in bold compositions that feel alive with movement and intensity.

Weyer's compositions span a spectrum of abstract expressions, from earthy to electric, offering a heightened, almost hallucinogenic explorations of the fundamental qualities of painting: color, shape, texture, and gesture. They pulse with vitality, capturing an abstract sense of evolution and mirroring the ceaseless transformations of the natural world. Titles such as Rewilding, Today I Feel Electric, Pollinator, Cute Puppy, Highlight, Sock and Sun, and The Lay of the Land hint at a world of sensations rather than narratives, suggesting moments of spontaneity, mood, and encounters with nature and self.

Indeed, Weyer’s experience working in her outdoor studio in upstate New York is integral to her process. Working on a platform in her backyard, she allows elements like shifting light and changing weather to influence her compositions, adding a sense of spontaneity and unpredictability. This open-air setting frees her work from the confines of a traditional studio, inviting an immediate circulation of energy, responding to the environment in real time. 

Anke Weyer (b.1974, Karlsruhe, Germany; lives and works in New York, US) attended the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. Selected solo exhibitions include CANADA, New York, NY, US; Meierbach, Düsseldorf, DE; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, US; and Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, BE.