JULIA OSCHATZ

„Hermitage Heritage“ – Painting / Video / Installation
June 26th through August 18th, 2007
Opening reception: Tue, June 26th 2007 at 7.30 p.m.

Julia Oschatz’ work lately was extensively presented in several solo shows in Germany like, among others, the Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr, the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg and Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, at the Institute for Modern Art in Nuremberg as well as in the supporting program of Documenta XII in the exhibition „Vision | Audition“ in the Martinskirche in Kassel.
For those who have observed Julia Oschatz’ work already for some time the Wesen (being) she created – a hybrid creature between human and animal – may feel like an old friend, they again and again have accompanied on its many travels and have felt invited or even painfully forced to share its adventures and experiments on itself.
The Wesen moves on apparently well-known terrain. Images of landscape, no matter if it is homeland woods or arctic ice landscapes, are medially appropriated common knowledge and often only require the implementation of certain characteristics to be recognised as one of the landscapes in the paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. The Wesen seems by all means to be aware of the arbitrariness of the image topoi it walks into in the course of its travels; falling into one image frame, it falls out of it again just the next moment to then find itself opposed to a rocky sheer, instantly quaffing off it. Julia Oschatz’ Wesen develops to an anti-hero which seems to remember us, but likewise itself, again and again anew in a self-ironic way of the fact that an often longwinded and sometimes painful way has to be covered to flee from traditional conceptions.
Julia Oschatz develops in her works – either video or painting – no narrative structures; her paintings often remain apparitional, the choice of colours is non-specifically subdued, the techniques are mixed according to her requirements. The artist also takes literally the characterisation of video as “moving image”: Likewise the painting also the short video animations are addicted to the two-dimensional and like the painting also the moving images are focussed on capturing one ephemeral moment among many others without concentrating too much on the single image. The narration which also in the video works is mostly constricted to one slapstick-like punch line develops at most in the image sequence, in the perception of a multitude of single images in a row. Therefore the Petersburg hanging style and the combination of painting and monitors on one and the same wall are just the logical consequence of the artists’ decision not to look for the truth in the single work but in the work’s context as a whole. Concurrently the spectator is invited, mostly by cave-like landscape out of cardboard, to immerse into the image cosmos and to, together with the Wesen, start his own journey.
In the exhibition “Hermitage Heritage” Julia Oschatz will transform the gallery spaces into an adventure space from which the Wesen starts into new worlds out of paintings, installation and video works. In a cave landscape out of cardboard boxes built into our video space will be presented the 8 video loops of the work “NOTATALL”. In the gallery space will be shown paintings as well as video projections.
Tasja Langenbach

Messen / fairs:
ART FORUM Berlin, 29.09.-03.10.2007
PULSE London, 11.10.-14.10.2007

Galerie | Anita Beckers | Frankfurt
Frankenallee 74
D-60327 Frankfurt / Main
Tel (0)69-73 9009 67
Fax (0)69-73 9009 68
info@galerie-beckers.de