Protection, room divider, arouser of hopeful expectations: those are even today the tasks of paravents. After a period of small flats, large rooms are once again in vogue and accordingly paravents too especially MINEA paravents. But these objects are not simply bits of furniture bur rather present surfaces to exhibit, and what’s more double-sided as well. This double-sidedness is however asymmetrical. The public view contrasts with the private one; functionally and in terms of design the later are more intimate, quieter, and introspective. Often the rear side contains larges areas of panel varnish to enable the owner(s) to write on: they become co-designers.

Minea-paravents are always devised from the viewpoint of the show side. They are conceived as ready two-, three- or five parters out of smooth wall surfaces without edge or frames. The significant events take place on the surface itself: textiles and painted designs on which applications of all kinds are laid as a relief. The colours are bearers of the shapes which are gesturally oriented reminding one of brush strokes which in turn dissolve themselves in larger contexts. The colours themselves follow the classical principle of figure and ground, showing as bolus under gold or silver. As in the work of the old masters and the craft tradition, only seldom is there smooth application of paint, but rather for the most part highly differentiated nuances of colour which alternately thicken and disappear.

Rolf Sachsse, Bonn
Art expert / Design theoretician

Constanze Reichmann employs as a foundation for painting the paravent, which also possesses the characteristic of being able to be presented standing freely in a room.

With the panel-bridging design of her paravents, she makes do without frames completely. As a result the individual panels do not become a collection of pictures but rather a homogenous composition, to some extent a panel positioned alone.

She does not only pay homage to the Asian tradition in her design but as well many artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. With the Coromandel Screen of Chinese origin, Constanze Reichmann’s paravents combine the material wood as a surface with a complicated process of applications of paint and varnish.

On a congruent paint foundation she creates screens with complicated techniques, colours, pigments and small structures in a relief-style format whose different sides always form a unified whole despite major contrasts.

Artistic design and craftwork quality complement each other to create captivating one-offs which accentuate nuances fascinatingly in any surroundings.

They are objects for rooms which Constanze Reichmann designs; not only easy to integrate within multi-functional, inner architecture but instead also having their place in extravagant ambientes of "residential stage-management".

Depending on the place in which they are exhibited, minea-paravents are either the dominant centre of vision or the integrative wall whose appeal can be still further intensified by placing them consciously. Their variability which permits ever new arrangements is a medium of multi-sided decoration.

Already a quotation from the Han epoch mentions the especial qualities of the paravent:
"Now it is so happened that the canopied seat of the imperial palaquin had stretched behind it a painted screen"
( HUA PING ­ FENG )

Georg Wagner
Professor for textile design, Fachhochschule (University of applied science) Krefeld, Germany