Parrotta

JOHANNES LOTZ »FLUCHT DURCH L.« ("ESCAPE THROUGH L.)

STUTTGART: OPENING ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2010, 7 - 9 PM

NOVEMBER 20, 2010 - JANUARY 22, 2011

In his paintings on canvas and wooden doors, Johannes Lotz creates pictorial worlds populated by bizarre characters who are on their way to weird places on labyrinthine paths. Sometimes to a greater, sometimes to a lesser extent, they seem to be leading towards familiar fairy tales, whose stories, however, were broken by the narration’s fragmentation and a formal inconsistency and thus remain encrypted. Like the fairy tales bearing references to threatening worlds one can hardly fathom, Lotz’ pieces have a similar way of leading to fragile and ambivalent habitats that can also offer a profound reflexion on social mechanisms. Not only the topic of pictorial worlds but also their process of painting is reminiscent of procedures that we know from literature and paintings – among others from the circle of Surrealists. André Breton first and foremost coined the Écriture automatique, which strived for texts and pictures created without any control through reason. In a comparable manner, Lotz uses the power of physical processes with which he partly breaks the controlling perception of reality of the consciousness and then captures and forms the result in his paintings.
The exhibition >>Flucht durch L.<< is dominated by a large-sized main group located predominantly in an atmospheric darkness which is frequently broken by a glow or flickering ranging from dubious to solemn. Although the characters’ frame of reference herein remains undefined it almost seems like the viewer joins them in entering a ceremonial chamber, in which the solemn atmosphere eases the glide into another reality.
Johannes Lotz (*1975) studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Mainz, Germany, with Friedemann Hahn as well as in Munich with Gertraud Schottenloher. After several solo exhibitions, among others at Galerie Michael Janssen in Berlin and Cologne as well as Künstlerhaus Saarbrücken, the Galerie Parrotta dedicates a second exhibition to Lotz. The exhibition is accompanied by an artist book published by Textem Verlag / Hamburg, available at the price of 20 euros.