Maria Tackmann. Lignes de désir / Desire lines

Desire lines is the name given by urban planners to paths carved out by walkers in a landscape, marked out by daily use as a shortcut by pedestrians avoiding the longer, more circuitous route planned for them.

Maria Tackmann traverses the territory, stepping off the beaten track. She explores the urban and natural fabric and interstitial zones, collecting fragments, small objects and materials. Once she has gathered her palette, she turns painter, arranging and composing the elements on the ground like a city, a book, a poem. In her quest for a harmony of shapes and concordance of materials, her creative practice stands open. She often dialogues with place, using her explorations to lay bare its strata and asperities.

Maria Tackmann also produces drawings, on paper, in dust, in cracked earth, with tangled twigs and scattered shards of glass. Sometimes the tread of a car leaving a festival, sometimes the artist’s own feet stepping a print in the snow.

Maria Tackmann was born in 1982 in Wattenwil, in the canton of Bern. She lives and works in Wald, in the canton of Appenzell.