Enigmatic tales

There was a time - before the eternal adult worries about mortgage payments, raising children, foreign debt, ulcers, and the onset of wrinkles - when everything was magical: the old oak tree transformed into a troll, the cellar teemed with child-eating monsters, and the sagging remains of a sheep shed in the field just beyond the hedge were the ruins of a mighty fortress, now inhabited only by strange subterranean creatures.

It is this lost world of imagination that comes to mind when viewing Stefanie Woschek’s series of paintings, "Architectural Narratives." At first glance, they appear to be pleasant, naturalistic depictions of windmills, castles, aqueducts, churches, and lighthouses; however, closer inspection corrects this assumption. If a comparison must be made, the closest parallel is likely Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings of deserted squares and urban spaces, characterized by strange, unsettling effects of light and shadow. Similarly, Stefanie Woschek’s architectural structures are never entirely level or rational. Perspectives tilt, wall surfaces are askew, details break away, and the color palette holds a supernatural, enigmatic quality. The surrounding landscape, too, does not arrange itself around the buildings in a naturalistic manner; stripped to its compositional essentials, it consists merely of grey-brown or golden bands of earth, sharply delineated against a sky of dark blue hues.

Although the images - with one tiny exception - are devoid of people, the paintings nonetheless teem with stories. These are stories one can glean from the titles, yet it remains up to the individual viewer to elaborate on them. Even so, one would hardly be mistaken to observe that openings - such as doors, windows, gateways, and the like - play a pivotal role. Indeed, every painting features one or more openings within the otherwise solid, inaccessible masses of the buildings.

Beyond their purely practical function, these openings may also hold symbolic significance as portals to another world where strange things occur: ladders reach toward upper floors or simply extend into the sky; building shadows take on the shapes of bizarre creatures; mysterious, ghostly light strikes the scene; and the dimensions of objects are turned upside down. In short, we have arrived in the magical realm of the imagination, lying beneath the prosaic surface of everyday phenomena. And this happens to such an extent that even the most utilitarian municipal water tower, the most ordinary house façade, and the most unpretentious stretch of masonry transform before our eyes into fables drawn from *One Thousand and One Nights*, the Legend of King Arthur, the chronicles of Saxo Grammaticus, or folk tales from around the world.