The Immersion and Immersive Integral drawings (2018) deal with how we perceive rather than exactly what we perceive. Voigt’s inquiry into the nature of perception seeks to develop the appropriate forms to understand the inner constitution of archetypal images, that which is behind what we see, and how such images might be experienced or shared collectively. The doughnut shape (torus) appears throughout the works in this series, a geometric form explored by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to illustrate his notion of “extimacy” (extimité), a neologism that combined the terms exterior (exterieur) and intimacy (intimité). Voigt’s landscapes of de-centered, ex-centric forms depict the unconscious as an inter-subjective rather than purely interior structure—something that although we may be immersed within will always remain outside of us, as something other, as Lacan writes in The Seminar: Book VII (1992), “something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me.”

The luscious colors of Potential (2020) and The Sum and Me (2022) draw us into a world of constant change of natural phenomena. Voigt’s process began by hand dying each sheet of paper with a hue that corresponded to specific stimuli or emotion—in this case a midnight blue that has real-life associations (marine or cosmological phenomena, etc.)—to which Voigt’s meticulous notations, gold leaf applications, and gestural markings add a layer of visual coding that conveys an emotional meaning and lulls the viewer into a kind of dream state, at once familiar and otherworldly. 

In Ludwig van Beethoven - Opus 33, Nr. 6 (2020), the artist does not strive to illustrate or interpret the music; rather, she is more concerned with researching perception and “developing a way of writing that extracts the emotional spectrum inscribed in Beethoven’s scores”—in other words, to survey the invisible. This investigation progresses with Study of Reality (2021), Particella (2021), and Fugue (2021), where Voigt combines drawing and collage, mounting a three-dimensional collage onto mirror glass. While smaller in scale than most of her work, these works play with the viewer's perception and the changing effects of light by creating the illusion of infinite space across the depth of superimposed layers of paper and the reflections produced by the mirror in the background.

Rhythm (2022) creates lines in three dimensions by slicing, cutting, repositioning, and layering colored paper and existing drawn lines into new configurations. Voigt’s experimentation evolves towards sculptural compositions, textured and graphic at times, or delicately shaped, such as the metal Dyads, where co-existing rhythms come together to organic units and the materials themselves yield questions about limitations, borders, and resilience, which can be expanded in scope to think more broadly about the interlocking rhythms of our world.

Jorinde Voigt (b. 1977, Frankfurt am Main) is a leading conceptual artist based in Berlin. She studied with Katharina Sieverding at Universität de Künste, Berlin, graduating with her Master of Fine Arts in 2004. From 2014 to 2019, she taught at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, and today she is a Professor of Conceptual Drawing and Painting at University of Fine Arts Hamburg. She has participated in biennials worldwide, most notably the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2011); Manifesta 11, Zurich (2016); Biennale de Lyon (2017); and Sharjah Biennial (2017). Recent solo exhibitions of her work have been presented by Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien (2020); BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2020); The Menil Collection, Houston (2019); Horst Janssen-Museum, Oldenburg (2019); Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2017); Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2016); Kunsthalle Krems (2015); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2014); the Langen Foundation, Neuss (2013); Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag (2010); as well as Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston (2022). Voigt’s work is included in the permanent collections of notable institutions worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthaus Zürich; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Bundeskunstsammlung, Bonn; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; Kunsthalle Praha Collection, Prague; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo; and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, among others.