Liminal Spaces

Liminal Spaces are spaces perceived as empty of people and momentarily removed from time, in other words non-places. At once picturesque and uncanny, they mark transitions between what was and what is to come. In the work of Fride Wirtl-Walser (born 1932), such ambiguous spatial situations are omnipresent and form a kind of gallery of in-between worlds. Wirtl-Walser studied sculpture at the Stuttgart academy, and painting and glass art at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. She lives in Peinting in Upper Bavaria and counts among the most important representatives of contemporary reverse glass painting. Reverse glass art is the symbiosis of craftsmanship precision and aesthetic ambition, of light refraction and spatial depth. It is made for an aesthetic of the doubtful, the uncanny and the beautiful. Through the application of paint on the back of the pane, a smooth, cool surface emerges that holds the eye at a distance while simultaneously drawing it deep into the motif. The brilliance of the glass gives the colours an almost surreal luminosity.