Christine Gläser’s practice belongs to a tradition of abstract painting that seeks in matter itself — in its behaviours, its resistances, its fluidities — the foundations of a visual language. For her, paint is above all a substance: liquid, opaque or transparent, behaving differently according to the humidity of the air, the temperature of the studio, the speed of application. This respect for the physical properties of paint translates into long, attentive processes: layers accumulate, permeate one another, and create transparencies and depths that only time can produce.

The final surface carries the memory of this long dialogue, of these successive decisions and accidents. What is fascinating in Gläser’s work is her ability to create the illusion of three-dimensional space with the most traditional means of painting. Her canvases seem to open onto inner horizons, virtual spaces that exist only in the viewer’s eye yet assert themselves with an almost physical self-evidence. A painting that thinks the visible through the invisible, and finds an unexpected freedom in the constraints of matter.

Materials and shades of colour, whether liquid, opaque or transparent, are the foundations of my work. My paintings are the result of a long process; it is a dialogue between the painting and me. In this dialogue the surface of the painting gradually opens onto a deep virtual space.