In the works with checkered patterns, summarized under the title Education Through Decoration, Simone Westerwinter takes up patterns from our daily experience to examine the ambivalence of order and disorder. At the same time, she deals with the analogy of visual patterns and patterns of consciousness. Checkered and grid structures represent thought processes here. It is therefore to be understood as an allusion to the patterns of thought that shape our actions and their formulaic nature. In the symmetrical arrangement, the square checkered pattern in Westerwinter’s work Karo Star embodies order and regularity. However, this association is broken by the artist by sewing a bright pink, irregular rectangle into the upper red square. Our sense of harmony and learned validity of patterns is put to the test by the artist.
Simone Westerwinter’s work encompasses numerous media from painting, drawing, and sculpture to spatial installation, video, photography, and performance. The artist often draws on art historical traditions, but always considers them with a wink through current references of a contentual and formal nature.
Simone Westerwinter
Karo Star, 2000/2002
