Rita Rohlfing (born 1964 in Bad Oeynhausen) is a German painter, photographer and installation artist.
Biography
Rita Rohlfing studied from 1985 to 1991 at the Braunschweig University of Art. In 1992 she was appointed "Master Student" (Meisterschüler) by Bernd Minnich and Roland Dörfler. She also received the "Dragoco Scholarship for Young Artists" at the Rudolf-Jahns-Haus in Holzminden and was honoured with an exhibition of her panel paintings in 1992. In 1994 she received a scholarship for the United States from the German Academic Exchange Service and studied there at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2002 she was a stipendiary of the "Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen" and in 2004 she was granted a junior scholarship by the Kunststiftung NRW. Rita Rohlfing is a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund and of the "Westdeutscher Künstlerbund". She lives and works in Cologne.
In 2018 Rita Rohlfing was awarded the , which was granted for the tenth time this year.
Artistic work
Rohlfing's works of art are located at the border between sculpture and painting. In addition to panel paintings, she creates object-like wall and floor elements and designs spatial installations: "If her works with their vital interest in paint and its effects also have strong roots in the field of color painting, they, with their emphasis on material and spatial effects, always present themselves as three-dimensional objects and as such have a relation to sculpture. In a large-scale format they even expand into veritable environments." (In German "Wenn auch ihre Arbeiten mit ihrem vitalen Interesse an Farbe und Farbwirkung eine starke Verankerung im Bereich der Farbmalerei besitzen, so präsentieren sie sich mit ihrer Betonung von Material und Raumwirkung doch immer auch als dreidimensionale Objekte und besitzen als solche einen skulpturalen Bezug; im Großformat weiten sie sich sogar zu veritablen Rauminstallationen.")
Panel paintings
Rohlfing's panel paintings are usually very large, irregularly shaped and monochrome, painted in bright red tones that radiate intensively into the surrounding space. Although the shaped canvases hangs on the wall like pictures, their form creates the impression of three-dimensionality. This becomes clear in her work "R.o.T." If one is standing directly in front of the work, it appears like a usual rectangular mural. But if the viewer moves and changes his point of view, he recognizes that the canvas is thicker at the top than at the bottom and the character of the rectangle becomes questionable. It seems as if the picture surface is curving towards the front into the room. Rohlfing's panel paintings are thus neither pure wall paintings nor pure sculptures, but rather they are expressions of the artist's cross-genre working method.
General information on spatial installations
In her spatial installations, Rita Rohlfing uses elements of minimalism, monochrome painting, and Color Field painting. She often combines various elements such as panel paintings, photographs and spatial installations into a Gesamtkunstwerk. Every single element of the installation is carefully planned to achieve the desired effect for the viewer. The use of color in her objects is an integral part of her productions, mostly she uses different shades of Red tones that radiate intensively into the surrounding space. In her individual objects, the colored elements are often hidden under frosted acrylglas panels. They get a diffuse nuance and look "nebelig" (in English "foggy"). The observer cannot see which elements are responsible for the color effect.