Julia Schmidt
22 Sep - 02 Nov 2012
JULIA SCHMIDT
rio 234
22 September - 2 November 2012
Julia Schmidt operates a painting practice grounded in the contemporary and its circulating networks, insisting on re-directing shards of the systems out there to the picture plane and the exhibition space. Snatched from around (interweb, mag, phonecam etc), images are scoured, fltered, rendered. Oil on Mdf. Digital speeds. The slowness of drying pigment.
Schmidt produces and presents paintings in specifc cycles or groupings. In rio 234 the exhibited pictures materialise a snared network of surfaces, motif and genre, demonstrating her preference for shifting thematic inter-relations. We encounter a constellation of economies, designations, repurposed quotations and interwoven contexts. Implicit, explicit. The fall collection.
A set of portraits, though here from the back. One with fashion-hair extensively styled to represent an extreme naturalness is multi-layered in a cool and lurid femish scheme. The second, extracted from an East Block photo shoot of self-made garments and natural dyeing techniques, is done in spartan greyscale on an excessive green ground. Simulation. Improvisation. Locations and conditions, methods of production and forms of labor.
A scenario like an abrasive still life and a painting combining lush areas of color with a stripped down fguration. A display of watch straps, everyday retail somewhere, and low cost products emblematic of a confounding concept and exploited principle -tick tick, from equinox to nano second and wages per hour, month or year. Price range. Color range.
A stark black and white painting features staccato composition and depicts a crafted detail both structural and ornamental. A ruined column from Nero ́s "Domus Aurea", a house then unrivalled in grandeur, technology and decadence -"the main banqueting hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens."
Vivid and densely layered, Untitled (corner com) resonates an unsettling aestheticism through the distillation of a garment pattern reformulated as an "abstract" painting. Textiles, brushstrokes, craft and commerce. Provenance and perception. Silk and the phantoms of gender in painting.
Schmidt avoids the pitfalls of the signature motif strategy. She utilizes an "appropriational" impulse mediated through both hi-end and slummy brush action and a selected pallet purposely deployed like color-as-attitude. In rio 234 we receive a network of images and a lexicon of painting which re-circulate artifacts of the present, exhibits brought to us from the ideological landscape enveloping out there and in here.
rio 234
22 September - 2 November 2012
Julia Schmidt operates a painting practice grounded in the contemporary and its circulating networks, insisting on re-directing shards of the systems out there to the picture plane and the exhibition space. Snatched from around (interweb, mag, phonecam etc), images are scoured, fltered, rendered. Oil on Mdf. Digital speeds. The slowness of drying pigment.
Schmidt produces and presents paintings in specifc cycles or groupings. In rio 234 the exhibited pictures materialise a snared network of surfaces, motif and genre, demonstrating her preference for shifting thematic inter-relations. We encounter a constellation of economies, designations, repurposed quotations and interwoven contexts. Implicit, explicit. The fall collection.
A set of portraits, though here from the back. One with fashion-hair extensively styled to represent an extreme naturalness is multi-layered in a cool and lurid femish scheme. The second, extracted from an East Block photo shoot of self-made garments and natural dyeing techniques, is done in spartan greyscale on an excessive green ground. Simulation. Improvisation. Locations and conditions, methods of production and forms of labor.
A scenario like an abrasive still life and a painting combining lush areas of color with a stripped down fguration. A display of watch straps, everyday retail somewhere, and low cost products emblematic of a confounding concept and exploited principle -tick tick, from equinox to nano second and wages per hour, month or year. Price range. Color range.
A stark black and white painting features staccato composition and depicts a crafted detail both structural and ornamental. A ruined column from Nero ́s "Domus Aurea", a house then unrivalled in grandeur, technology and decadence -"the main banqueting hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens."
Vivid and densely layered, Untitled (corner com) resonates an unsettling aestheticism through the distillation of a garment pattern reformulated as an "abstract" painting. Textiles, brushstrokes, craft and commerce. Provenance and perception. Silk and the phantoms of gender in painting.
Schmidt avoids the pitfalls of the signature motif strategy. She utilizes an "appropriational" impulse mediated through both hi-end and slummy brush action and a selected pallet purposely deployed like color-as-attitude. In rio 234 we receive a network of images and a lexicon of painting which re-circulate artifacts of the present, exhibits brought to us from the ideological landscape enveloping out there and in here.