Schöne Mutanten

The second solo presentation of the young Munich artist Judith Grassl (D) in the KALI Gallery, focuses, in addition to the new series of paintings "Holey", also on the first emergence into three-dimensionality, through a site-specific installation.

This puts the starting point of her artistic work, the collage, in the center. Both the composition finding, with the cast shadows and superimpositions, as well as different worlds or perspectives in the image spring from her work with collage.

"The principle of collage fascinates me because it allows ambivalence and space for reflection. It offers the possibility to create a multitude of dimensions, to parallelize different perspectives and to create a new connection between the layers." - Judith Grassl

The title of the exhibition "Schöne Mutanten" (Beautiful Mutants) refers to the book of the same name by Deborah Levys, which tells of outsiders who live restless and gridless lives and are connected by them.

Thus Judith Grassl deals with gender-related aspects of human identity and examines the supposed "feminine" or "masculine" categorizations and the dichotomies that accompany them, such as soft/hard, tender/aggressive, expressive/introverted, proud/shy in their painterly juxtaposition or dissolution. Using religious and profane pictorial topoi, such as that of the muse, Madonna or Venus, she questions the influence of these on contemporary social role models.

In doing so, the process of painting is a way of tracing this connection in a kind of slow motion. Thus, her paintings become mutants that constantly change from the genetic material of past views. As if in an endless loop, she continues to arrange fragments from the pictorial material and her own paintings in the painterly space. In this way, she wants to give the viewer the opportunity to participate in her painterly space with his own perspective and thus to connect his own imaginations, ideas and associations with the picture. This, in turn, dissolves the boundaries of their own perspective, and the painting can become a part of something new.

For KALI Gallery, the artist will show the latest paintings in large format, depicting abstemious figurative worlds and forming collages on canvas. The creations establish communication through the intuitive and associative thinking of the viewer and skillfully guide him. Her work focuses on the classic format of the painting and beyond, writing plans and building spaces.

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