In Rita Ackermann's art, the systematic and the accidental are kept in a state of constant dialogue and debate. Balance and the effort to achieve it have become the main focus of her process, and a kind of magical flux has become both the subject and condition of her art. Nowhere is the alchemy of Ackermann's work more vivid than in the group of seventeen paintings made between the years of 2010 and 2013 and presented in Negative Muscle, the artist's first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth in New York, opening 5 March 2013.The exhibition takes its title from the very first painting Ackermann made following an intensive collaboration with filmmaker Harmony Korine on 'Shadow Fux', their 2010 exhibition of jointly-made collages at the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, New York NY. Negative Muscle will be on view until April 20. 2013 at Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, New York. photographs by Annabel Graham