Originality within known techniques – Ina Dederer’s creative, prospective interpretation.

 

In her work Ina Dederer merges Pop Art, graphic design and photography into her oil paintings. Referred to in digital image processing as Posterization, the artist has developed her own technique whereby colors and contrasts of her photographic templates are manipulated and simplified. Using the template as a support she recreates the image with oil on canvas. Ina Dederer captures the external beauty of female celebrities and models but also demonstrates that in fact, although beautiful, they aren’t as perfect as they seem.

The artist uses characteristic elements of Pop Art, an art movement that started in the fifties first in Britain and then in the United States of America. Some of her artworks are reinterpreted reproductions of well-known artists and though these paintings depict a similar subject, they are all differentiated by technique and color. As Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein, Ina Dederer creates pictorial simplifications of the reality and plays with her medium that is oil painting, reusing the classical or inventing new techniques and combinations.  The artist’s artworks appear new and attractive thanks to her individual style. Photographic portraits of female celebrities or Hollywood icons serve as templates for Ina Dederer’s new series “Beauties”. The artist combines and varies her subjects creating her own artistic genre.
 

Colors affect moods, feelings, and emotions in arts but also play a role in our daily lives. Color can generate psychological effects that impact our subconscious in several ways depending on our culture and personal state of being. Numerous abstract painters, such as Kandinsky, studied and confirmed the power of the language of colors and forms in the beginning of the 20th century. Ina Dederer’s paintings display harmonic and fluid color transitions through the use of color reduction and color separation. The paintings communicate on a pictorial level and invoke emotion within the on-looker. Even though strong contrasts are used to fill the images, the colors and flowing contours create a warm and comforting blend.

In her series “The Beauties” the artist plays with perspectives and points of view. When one observes the paintings from a distance, the bright portraits depict perfectness and beauty. However, as one draws closer one notices the imperfect details such as the abrupt and sudden transition between surfaces of colors or parts of the skin painted in unnatural colors, such as purple, dark green or blue. This could be seen as mimicking our day-to-day lives where marketing through advertisement, whether physical or online through social media, promotes celebrities’ and models by hiding their imperfections. It is in fact the distance created by the medium that constructs this illusion. Ina Dederer dismantles the myth of perfect beauty and highlights the reality one tends to forget; this artistic statement differentiates the painter from her predecessors.

 

Ina Dederer’s talent and curiosity parallel her know-how and hard working nature. Her vision is deep-rooted in her interest for art; this has been developed to result in truly unique and innovative paintings.