Janaina Tschäpe

Sean Kelly is delighted to announce a sky filled with clouds and the smell of blood oranges, Janaina Tschäpe’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. This exhibition marks an exciting evolution in Tschäpe's artistic journey, emphasizing a profound personal exploration, with a focus on the scale and fluidity of mark-making that characterize the artist's vigorous abstractions. Coinciding with the exhibition, a major new monograph on Janaina Tschäpe’s work, featuring an erudite and informative essay by distinguished art historian Joachim Pissarro, is being published by Hatje Cantz and Sean Kelly. There will be an opening reception on Friday, September 6, 6-8pm. The artist will be present.

Tschäpe's latest body of work underscores the artist’s fascination with the emotional and poetic potential of art. In this exhibition, she explores the interplay between scale and intimacy, featuring works in oil and oil stick on canvas and works on paper in various scales, including multi-paneled paintings. In the diptych, Lion colored hills, 2024 and triptych, Walking through fields (Passeando no tempo), 2024, each painting functions both independently and as part of a unified narrative. Tschäpe’s artistic expression intertwines the sublime vastness of German landscapes with the vibrant essence of Brazilian culture, blending philosophical tenets from polymath Friedrich Schiller, the inspiring poetry of Octavio Paz, and the concept of observing and celebrating nature advocated by geographer Alexander Von Humbolt.

Tschäpe’s works become sites of intense emotional and intellectual inquiry—the space between passion and reason—where the act of painting is both a meditation on and a resistance to its constraints. The paintings in this exhibition compose an environment in which each work converses with the next, fostering a continuous and evolving narrative. They showcase Tschäpe’s mastery harnessing the fluid dynamics of painting to depict a landscape that is both internal and external, mirroring the complexities of human emotion and perception. As Joachim Pissarro states in his essay, “Tschäpe’s canvases serve as arenas wherein the visible intermingles with the visceral, inviting us to traverse conceptual depths through layers of paint and memory that subtly insinuate rather than explicitly reveal.” Her paintings transform nature's experiences into abstract movements, where air and light become extensions of her gestures. Each piece, rooted in layered memories of landscape, uncovers new connections and energies across the canvas.

a sky filled with clouds and the smell of blood oranges highlights the different types of mark-making and media Tschäpe has incorporated throughout her work, spanning bold and dynamic brushwork to fine, drawing-like strokes and expansive, gestural applications of oil paint and oil stick. The exhibition also features her delicate watercolors and pastel works, creating a dialogue between different media and enhancing the interplay amongst her works. Inspired by the evocative, dreamlike qualities of August Strindberg's landscapes, Tschäpe titled some of the new works with names influenced by the Swedish playwright and painter, such as flowers by the shore (after Strindberg), 2024. Strindberg’s ability to evoke the ethereal and the mystical in his depictions of the natural world resonates deeply with Tschäpe’s vision. Blending elements of lyrical abstraction with themes drawn from the natural world, Tschäpe’s use of color and form creates a visual language that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.

Janaina Tschäpe’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Den Frie Center of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark; the Sarasota Art Museum, Florida; the Musée L’Orangerie, Paris, France; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ; Kasama Nichido Museum of Art, Kasama, Japan; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, and the Contemporary Museum of Art, St. Louis, MO. She has been featured in numerous group exhibitions at venues including NCA Taipei, Taiwan; Whitechapel Gallery, London; TBA21-Augarten, Austria; CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Centre D’Art Contemporain de Normandie, France; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Ronnebaeksholm, Denmark; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA; and Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan. Her work is found in important public collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Harvard Art Museum, MA; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, amongst others.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition, a major new monograph, Janaina Tschäpe, extensively documents Tschäpe’s work over the past seven years, alongside installation images of her museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide. This publication documents a prolific period of creativity and boundary-pushing use of media.

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

For press inquiries, please email Adair Lentini at Adair@skny.com

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

Image caption: Janaina Tschäpe, Walking through fields (Passeando no tempo), 2023, Oil and oil stick on linen, overall: 92 x 222 x 1 1/2 inches Each panel: 92 x 70 x 1 1/2 inches © Janaina Tschäpe Courtesy: the artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles