Pyro in Primary Colors (blue, yellow and red)

The ball goes into the net – but there's so much more to football. Football is full of stories, descriptions of situations, and emotions that artists express in their work, some as spectators, others as players. Patricia Lambertus, for example, conveys in her work the passion of the fans who accompany their team and go through almost literally heaven and hell with them during a match.

The digital prints shown in the exhibition are far more painterly and atmospheric than one might expect from the artist's other work. We know her as a composer of figurative and ornamental images and fragments that tell stories graphically and scenically. Their particular appeal often lies in the visible and frequently contrasting clash of opposites and worlds. Here, Patricia Lambertus takes a different approach. While these works are also combinations of numerous found images from football stadiums, which she digitally processes and assembles, she avoids a typical collage aesthetic. Only upon close inspection can one discern transitions from one piece to another in certain places. Her focus here is on a painterly, atmospheric visual impression. Her starting point was William Turner, the master of clouds, smoke, and mist, which he effectively staged with light. Similar lighting conditions and a distinctive, hazy atmosphere can also be found in Patricia Lambertus's work. They have become overwhelming orgies of color. In each of the three pictures, one can feel the glowing light, the dissolution of form and the almost physical power of color - elements that William Turner also uses in his works, albeit in a way appropriate to his time.

Patricia Lambertus finds her Turner moments not in technology or landscape, but in the stadium. She captures the air saturated with smoke from flares during a football match. Each of the three images has a different focus. In the first image, three stewards in safety vests draw our gaze into a wall of yellow smoke. In the second image, with its rhythmically arranged flares, the fire and smoke evoke hell rather than a leisure facility where one can relax and watch a football game. We feel closer to heaven, however, when we then look through blue clouds into a bright light that promises salvation. Heaven and hell – many a fan experiences these stadiums during a football match. By making dangerous flares her central theme, Patricia Lambertus presents an aesthetic of terror, not the game itself on the green pitch. She evokes the intense emotions of the spectators and draws us into her images. In this way, we too experience all the emotions of a game between hell and paradise, as if we were there as well.

Dr. phil. Hanneke Heinemann