Christine Sauerteig-Pilaar is a contemporary artist living and working in New Jersey. Her compelling and emotional artworks look to speak to the primitive side of the human existence and how that relates to modern day life. Christine focuses on the female form as her muse, mostly conjured from self-portraits, where she utilizes her body to manipulate feelings of a quiet rage within women in the more domestic interiors of lives not usually viewed as remarkable or unique. She works to search out the uniting thread of feminism in the dark spaces of suburban life, and looks to thrust the spotlight on the unsaid struggles and betrayals of women in our current society.
Christine received her BFA from Parson’s School of Design in 1993, and after living in New York City, relocated to New Jersey where she has continuously experimented with mediums having stretched the limits from making her own oil paints to using shellac and iron filings to transforming her work to the mixed media technique she has developed more recently. Her current process involves hand sewing donated and found sewing patterns, ink, thread, graphite, gauche and fabric.
Artist Statement
My current work is the result of a complete wiping away of the work I had been making for years. I cleansed my studio, layered paintings on top of themselves in the back space, created a drawing wall and began with simple charcoal and paper. I came back to myself, making portraits that I increasingly pushed for more bravery within myself to push more out of the way. I continue to realize my body as communication, and to face more and more truths with my body. My body has survived many atrocities and glories over the years. I have birthed two amazing girls, I have nursed them and carried them. I have broken bones, discovered illnesses, disregarded my body’s worth, harmed it, pampered it and embraced it, and pushed it to its limits. It has bled, healed, succumbed, released, and endured. Every day is another reality with in this flesh, another truth I must face.
Through this exploration, I have discovered a universal woman who stands steadfast in our current political atmosphere. This woman I portray in my work comes from a primal place. She is strong and wild, she withstands, but not politely. She growls in her confrontation, and is still not afraid to be introspective. This woman is fierce and mature, flexing her muscle from all she has endured, and will use it to prove her strength now. She carries within her the seeds of change, and although they are not fresh blossoms, they are still vital and valuable.
My Art during COVID began to shift even inward. I began to work on found materials, or items people were giving to me during the Great COVID Clean-Out. Social media was alive with people giving away free items, and my Hippie heart loves to recycle. Going to pick them up was an outing, something to do during quarantine. It was also a distraction from the reality of my Dad losing his final battle with Parkinson’s two states away in quarantine, as I managed his home healthcare workers, doctors and Hospice through texts. So as I was rummaging through memorabilia for photos of my Dad to use during his funeral, I came upon some old upholstery patterns my Mom had used during my youth when she started a little upholstery business to help make ends meet. She would tap away or staple long into the night, and frequently had to have large sofas in my bedroom as it was the only place big enough for her to work on it and not be in the way of family living. I immediately knew I had to use it in my work. With a new observation on memory and how one sees and feels memories, and recycling materials that were personal, I began a new series I had no idea I was beginning. I just began to draw. I freed my mind and experienced the flow. I experimented with materials in ways I never thought I would. My female Muse adapted to communicate a new vision dealing with memory and how difficult it is to see them clearly. It also speaks about seeing memories through an adult or older version of one ’s self, and how that changes the memory. She embodies how the memory is not a concise capture, it is fluid and changeable, able to be dissected and viewed as multifaceted.
The more I have worked with this series, the meaning has become deeper. The sewing pattern papers, many of them not having seen the light of day for many decades, starting around the 1950’s, become an entirely different element. They are fragile, and speak to a time when women were in a very different place than we are now collectively. They show a plan, a coming together. By sewing them together, they become stronger and less brittle. Yet, by not enclosing them in glass and keeping them precious and letting them flow with the breezes of people walking by, or with the wind from an open window, they are exposed to the elements and have started the process of disintegrating. They will metamorphize with age. Much in the same respect of how women are seen as we age, the wrinkles become more obvious and the newness slips away. The flower drawings are a nod to the aging of women. All the flowers I draw in the fabric are at the point where they are just losing their suppleness and in the process of decaying and withering. All these ideas work in a layered form as these notions are intangible and time flows by. The piece moves and can shift and is never perfect.
CV
Born 1971 Pompton Plains, NJ Lives and works in Oak Ridge, NJ
Solo Shows:
2024
Solo Show “To Bare Witness” The Center for Contemporary Art Bedminster, NJ
Group Shows:
2024
Bridging Nature WhittemoreCCC Oldwick, NJ
The Art of Fiber Orange Delaware Water Gap, PA
2023
Visceral Bodies Gallery Aferro Newark, NJ Curator: Juno Zago
BLOOM Gallery Aferro’s 20th Anniversary Benefit Gallery Aferro Newark, NJ
International Juried Exhibition The Center for Contemporary Art Bedminster, NJ Curator: Estaban del Valle
60th Annual Juried Competition Masur Museum Monroe, LA
Winner: Second Prize Curator: Jovanna Venegas, Assistant Curator at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
2022
Art Fair 14C: Showcase Exhibition Jersey City Armory, Jersey City, NJ
Members Show Hunterdon Art Museum Winner: Hunterdon Art Museum Prize Clinton, NJ Juror: Lewis Wexler (Wexler Gallery)
New Jersey Arts Annual: Reemergance New Jersey State Museum Curator: Sarah B. Vogelman selected piece “Untitled 3”
2021
ThroughLines Indianapolis Art Center Indianapolis, IN Selected Piece: “Untitled 2”
ReWriting Herstory: Women Who Excel In Sports And The Written Word Drawing Rooms Jersey City, NJ Selected Work: “Portrait of Anne Sexton”
Prayers For The Pandemic Project Drawing Rooms Jersey City, NJ Selected Work: “Prayer Flags”
Womyn’s Werk Studio Montclair Gallery Curator: Donna Kessinger Selected piece “Klutch”
2020
ViewPoints 2020 Studio Montclair Gallery Montclair, NJ Curator: Virginia Fabbri Butera, PhD Selected piece “Tempest”
Art in Cadence Dineen Hull Gallery at HCCC Jersey City. NJ Selected piece “Primal Squeeze”
ArtFair 14C Juried Show Jersey City. NJ Selected piece “Power Struggle”
2016
39th Hilltop Country Day School’s Art Exhibit and Sale Sarta, NJ
Fall Juried Exhibition Barn Gallery at the Ringwood Manor Exhibited Piece “Red Sandstone Mountains”
2015
Seventh Annual Figurative Drawing and Painting Competition and Exhibition Lore Degenstein Gallery , Susquahanna, PA Selected piece “Sleeping Beauty”
Landscapes 2015 Online Art Exhibition Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery Exhibited piece “Wallich Field”
2014
Annual National Juried Art Exhibition 41 Artists from 14 States The Academy of Fine Arts, Lynchburgh,VA Juror: Elise Schweitzer Exhibited piece “O Fish ‘O Happiness, I purge Thee”
Sixth Annual Figurative Drawing and Painting Competition and Exhibition Lore Degenstein Gallery , Susquahanna, PA Exhibited Piece “The Land of Cockaigne”
2013
National Juried Online Exhibit Linus Gallery “Nature Speaks” Linus Gallery Exhibited piece “What?What?What?”
National Juried Art Exhibition The Ann White Academy Gallery, Lynchburg VA Juror: David Dodge
Collecting Art: An Affordable Art Fair , Juried Montclair Art Museum, Monclair, NJ
Residencies:
2022
Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation Residency Mana Contemporary Jersey City, NJ
Publications:
McCall, Tris “Garden State Art Weekend Preview 11 Must See Exhibitions” NJARTS.net April 17, 2024
Rockwell, Chris Soup Can Magazine Issue #9 April 2023
Anania, Billie “The New Jersey Art Fair You Didn’t Know About” Hyperallergic Nov 11, 2022