Katharina Ziemke chose to name her first solo exhibition after the name of a horrendous battle Solferino, which occurred under the Second Empire on the 24th of June 1859, involving French, Sardinian and Austrian soldiers. The battle of Solferino is more remembered for the ghastly conditions in which the wounded were cared for, than for the mitigated victory it brought to Napoleon III. There is also a painting by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonnier at the Musée d’Orsay depicting this battle and its disorders. Astonishingly enough, Katharina Ziemke’s painting can be compared to the way Meissonnier “petrified” the heaps of soldiers – dead or alive – on the slipping ground, thus strangely evoking a pastry, an indecent tiered wedding cake. Thibaut de Ruyter writes that Katharina Ziemke’s painting makes him think of chinaware. “Certain colours, due to their artificiality, conjure up food colourings used in cakes, coulis and marzipan”. According to Katharina Ziemke, “we become aware of the trick and beauty of painting because of its silence, after all painting is colours applied to volumes. Thus, the red of a dead soldier’s trousers can spill out, as if the painter had worked carelessly. ” (1)
