*1935 Münster – lives in Cologne

Rune Mield’s began her artistic work quite late: First, she trained as a bookseller in the early 1950s. However, she soon gave up this profession and began to work as an self-taught artist. In 1968 she was a founding member of the Zentrum für aktuelle Kunst – Gegenverkehr (Centre for Contemporary Art – Oncoming Traffic) in Aachen, in 1977 she participated in the documenta 6. In 1984, the established artist received a visiting professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 1988 the State Art Gallery of Baden-Baden organized together with the Kunstverein Bonn her most extensive solo exhibition to date. The following year she became the guest of honour at Villa Massimo in Rome. Further awards and prizes followed.

Mields was first known for her large-format tube pictures. Using a systematic theoretical approach, she designed large-format geometric figures, mainly tubes and cones, in hard black and white contrasts on canvas. Through simple overlaps and the skilful play with the vanishing point, interesting contrasts arise between the visual grasp of the concrete space and one’s own perception. It is a game with the third dimension: a larger-than-life, seemingly plastic geometric figure hovers over the viewer and points to him almost threateningly. The viewer himself becomes the vanishing point of a figure that apparently breaks through the surface of the canvas.

These theoretical-geometric works were followed by works with scientific and historical, but also philosophical references. For this, Mields continued to deal intensively with mathematics and music, but also with classification systems, algorithms, signs and structures in general and with their respective meanings in different cultures and contexts – for example, the visual implementation of a binary system according to Francis Bacon, the series Master of Signs (a series of pictures in which mathematical signs are assigned to the respective year of origin and “inventor” of the sign) as well as the visual implementation of the Fibonacci formula.