stubborn loops

In the organizer's words:

The Munich-based artist Judith Grassl (*1985) combines figuration and abstraction as well as a real and virtual appearance in her delicate paintings. In the stage-like spaces that the artist captures on large canvases, pictorial elements, colors, surfaces and perspectives intertwine and overlap. The spaces appear as aesthetic and precarious provisional arrangements in which the levels of reality are obscured.

Her paintings fascinate through their aesthetic appeal, the fine application of paint and the play with perspectival levels. On large canvases, she opens up the view into stage-like spaces whose spatial logic is undermined by the principle of collage. Here she places fragmentary forms, representational and figurative elements that charge the scenario with symbolism: sharply defined surfaces with a sensual-looking internal structure of fine, shiny hair, abstracted female figures or the recurring apple, which is emphasized in a meaningful way.

The starting point for her works are various images, often from art historical contexts, which Judith Grassl explores in terms of their effect and their change in meaning. She creates collage-like restagings from the originals, from which she makes sketches and then three-dimensional models that form the basis for the paintings. These are created in a complex process of layering: Colors and shapes are interlaced and superimposed. Her paintings oscillate between figuration and abstraction as well as between a real and virtual appearance, which gives them an ambivalent appearance.
Recognizable borrowings from art history such as the cubist dissection of space, the collage principle of Dadaism or references to symbols of medieval religious painting are restaged by the artist and linked with contemporary aesthetics and metaphors.

In the exhibition, the artist is showing numerous new works - in both small and large formats up to 3.5 meters wide.

Judith Grassl studied art education as well as painting and graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She has received numerous scholarships and has already been represented in many exhibitions in Germany and abroad, most recently at the Claire Gastaud Gallery in Antwerp and in 2024 at the Neue Galerie Landshut (with Viola Relle).