Open: Tue-Fri 11am-6pm, Sat 10am-6pm

1357 N Highland Ave, CA 90028, Los Angeles, United States
Open: Tue-Fri 11am-6pm, Sat 10am-6pm

Visit    

• Visit
• Visit
• Contact Gallery
• Save Exhibition

Artist: Janaina Tschäpe

Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, presents Restless Moraine, Janaina Tschäpe’s first solo exhibition in LA. This new body of work presents Tschäpe’s intricately layered abstract landscapes featuring imagery evocative of the natural world, suggesting growth, transition, and metamorphosis. Created entirely with oil paint and oil stick, these new paintings exponentially expand the artist’s investigation of the relationship between gesture and painting.

Tschäpe’s dynamic yet, carefully nuanced canvases evoke associations with nature that at times suggest both sea and land, as her atmospheric images shift subtly between representation and abstraction. In previous painting cycles, Tschäpe combined casein, watercolor, colored pencils, and crayons with oil and oil stick; in this new body of work, she is working solely in oil. With this medium, Tschäpe feels she can “dive further into the layers” of the painting, creating much more fluid and gestural surfaces, while also creating distinct layers of stratification. Building up the image with large, sweeping brushstrokes provides a foundation and structure for Tschäpe’s vigorous compositions. In this manner, her signature mark making becomes embedded in both the foreground and background.

Describing her process, Tschäpe states, “I want the brushstroke to conquer the canvas… To me, painting means feeling something right up close, being physically in the present with body and soul.” Indeed, Tschäpe’s paintings are extremely physical compositions, reflecting the dynamic range of motion and intensity of focus the artist brings to their making. At the same time, these are contemplative and suggestive compositions that translate Tschäpe’s observations and memories of natural phenomena, such as changes in light, the movement of leaves, the rushing of water and movement of the wind, into a language of abstraction that is at once lively and serene; deeply personal, yet open to interpretation.

Janaina Tschäpe’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Den Frie Center of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark; the Sarasota Art Museum, Florida; the Musée L’Orangerie, Paris, France; the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, Arizona; Kasama Nichido Museum of Art, Kasama, Japan; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, and the Contemporary Museum of Art, St Louis. She has been featured in numerous group exhibitions at venues including NCA Taipei, Taiwan; Whitechapel Gallery, London; TBA21-Augarten, Vienna, Austria; CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Centre D’Art Contemporain de Normandie, France; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Nanazawa, Japan; Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo; Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Kunsthal Kade, The Netherlands; Ronnebaeksholm, Denmark; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts; and Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan. Her work is found in important public collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Harvard Art Museum, Massachusetts; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, amongst others.