Janaina Tschäpe: New Works
14 October–5 December 2009, Brussels
Janaina Tschäpe, Catherine Bastide gallery, exhibition view, 2010
New York based Brazilian and German artist, "Janaina Tschäpe shares her forename with a Brazilian water goddess, and, not coincidentally, her photographs and performances-to-video feature sumptuously organic, watery, distorted female figures," writes Frieze.
Janaina Tschäpe continues to explore abstract landscapes in a new series of drawings and paintings. She seeks to give form to the trance of art making, portraying not a dream world, but the sensation of being in one. Her use of organic lines and ethereal forms create a network of relationships, linking the process of artistic practice to lifecycles found in nature. In Brazil, nature is overwhelming. Everything is growing on top of something else - there is always a plant breaking through a wall or a tree shooting out of the ground. “When I go back to the city, I paint with these memories. As I work, the paint seems to takes over”. Large and expressive gestures coincide with intricate repetitive details using layers of lush color, constructing a space for contemplative exploration and open interpretations. There is an almost mathematical element to the composition with colour and shape, yet the patterns are gently broken with brushstrokes, a response to the cycles of transformation in nature.
