Rune Mields at Galerie Jollenbeck - Cologne

For over 30 years, German painter and autodidact Rune Mields has sought to represent objectively the internal logic and cultural sources of mathematical and narrative systems. Unwavering in her adherence to an anti-esthetic developed in the early 1970s, Mields confines each work to strict parameters. She paints only in unmixed black and white, patiently produces shades of gray with multiple translucent layers, and limits imagery to abstract symbols and schematic, photo-derived forms. For her painting cycles, it takes years to research such disparate subjects as creation myths from around the world and the sign system used by American hoboes.

Mields's most recent series, an investigation of the concept of infinity, was on view at the Galerie Jollenbeck in Cologne, where she has lived and worked since 1971. The nine large oil paintings and six smaller studies in ink on paper interpret the fear and fascination that endlessness has held for famous writers and mathematicians. The paintings are generally vertical and close in size. Unendlichkeit (nach John Milton) (Infinity, according to John Milton), 2002, transcribes the poet's musing--"Infinity is a dark, immense ocean without borders"--in silvery text at the bottom of a lush field of subtly graded black. An obvious pictorial solution, yes, but also a precise visual translation of one individual's imagining of a concept pondered by many, including Euclid and Goethe. The tension between abstract thought in general and specific cultural contexts informs Mields's previous work about the European inventors of mathematical symbols. A 1998 ink-on-paper drawing from that series portrays the face of John Wallis, who designed the symbol for infinity in 1655, overlapped by his now familiar reclining figure eight.

The horizontally formatted painting Das Labyrinth der Unendlich. keit (Labyrinth of Infinity), 2002, finds nonsensical anagrams of the Latin word infinitas at the center of an extensive labyrinth. This, the largest work on view (58 1/2 by 97 1/2 inches), best synthesizes Mields's long-standing interests in perspective, geometry, word games and metaphysical conundrums. A concurrent retrospective at Kunsthalle Barmen, the contemporary art annex of the Yon Der Heydt Museum in nearby Wuppertal, confirmed the range of Mields's subject matter with paintings about Fibonacci, St. Francis and chess. It's not surprising, then, that Mields's works have been shown in diverse settings including a synagogue, a feminist art exhibition and a museum of concrete art. Suppressing the emotion of color and line, Mields directly transmits to the viewer her endless infatuation with ideas.

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