Zsofia Schweger: Cataloging Time at Sapar Contemporary

Stripped down to its basic elements “Cataloging Time” is a minimalist jaunt, not of feeling, rather an investigation of an opaque world emerging in the painter’s practice as nuance compared to her other works, it is about the use of color, form, and angles from a two-point perspective. In this case, it is the absence of color that is telling. The exploration here is dispossessed of human involvement, only the framework of convention portrayed in functional material objects obliges an awareness that people use what is in the room. Dare I say, Zsofia Schweger’s work lends itself to the illustrator's hand in surreal dialogue objectified to obviate familiarity? Humans, because of their participation with the certainty of their material circumstances leave behind shadows of themselves. There are no personal goods here, no touches of a personality, no tell-tale reference of personalities. It’s a broad purview in which we find ourselves speculating on the painter’s work. There is nothing left behind; no identifying moniker to betray a relationship to space even though both the library and the apartment are both places she has spent time in, rather it is an ersatz reality; a representation of actuality.

That Schweger was influenced by Charles Sheeler is undoubtedly clear. Yet it’s Sheeler’s ability to give passion, vibrant and strong color wedded to the absolute perfection of lines and shadows of his masterpieces that make his work consequential in the pantheon of exceptional painters. In this survey, color and form is neutralized. The environment is sterile and desensitized, the “things” in the room simply represent the practical tools and objects we organize our endeavors around, rather than exuding a life force.

The color of the plant in the apartment setting is pastel and imparts a surreal impersonation of the only living thing in the space; objectification as a representation of the room’s two-dimensional surrealistic values isolates its equivalence. It is there for the sake of “being” as an expected thing; to illustrate a place in abstract space and time. The books have little variable quality, only in the most subtle ways. The library is a place of learning and beckons us to its vast collection of scholarship without the pump of colors to distract us. The painter’s selections of a library and an apartment she occupied seem to be a meditation on composure and quietude; a resistance to emotion but a cool embrace to space and stillness. It is an overall impression, rather than an in-depth exploration which emerges from “Cataloging Time”.