Meridians Invitation only: Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Public days: December 2 – 4, 2021

Janaina Tschäpe's major painting Between Veils of Blue and Grey, a Forest, 2021 is one of her most ambitious paintings to date. This bold new painting, part of Tschäpe’s latest body of work, was made utilizing large, oil sticks in addition to the water-based pigments she previously employed, marking a fresh new direction in her oeuvre. This shift in both material and scale allows the artist to "draw" as one would with a pencil or pastel, in addition to painting with a brush, producing a body of work that represents a fundamental move towards larger and more resolute gestures. Perhaps the most important change affecting Tschäpe's recent work was brought on by the pandemic when she left the city to work in nature. Whilst her work has always referenced the natural world, it was primarily through an interior dialogue in the studio, conjuring memories and associations. Whilst physically surrounded by nature, Tschäpe experienced what the German Romantics referred to as The Sublime, the sense of awe or wonder aroused by one's feeling of relative insignificance in the face of nature's vast and grand beauty. In discussing her process Tschäpe states, “In nature, you expose yourself to the uncontrollable, the sublime; you do not switch off the sun, stop the wind, or silence the noises.” Emphasizing the conjunction between human nature – emotional turbulence, expression, and freedom – and that of the physical world, this body of work is, for Tschäpe, also inspired by the late 18th-century German literary movement Sturm und Drang, which exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism.

For additional information on Janaina Tschäpe, please visit skny.com

For all other inquiries, please email Cecile Panzieri at Cecile@skny.com