Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website Martha Jungwirth: Recent Paintings | 4 Sep - 16 October 2021 | Paris Marais
agosto 05, 2021 - Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Martha Jungwirth: Recent Paintings | 4 Sep - 16 October 2021 | Paris Marais

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My pictorial reality is charged with passion, a language tied to the body, to dynamic movement. Painting is a matter of form, and then it receives a soul – through me. — Martha Jungwirth

For her first exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac, Austrian artist #marthajungwirth (*1940 in Vienna) presents a new series of paintings of animal-like and abstract figures rendered with her characteristic palette of reds, violets, yellows and magentas. The works were made during the pandemic, almost like a diary of isolation, reflecting Jungwirth’s intimate connection to herself and the external world. What emerged are expressive, poetic and emotional paintings, ranging in size from smaller formats to polyptychs evoquing ancient myths, the limits of civilisations and the fragility of life.

Martha Jungwirth’s work draws on various sources - the human body, travelling, art history, mythology, historical, social and political contexts - capturing fleeting, internal impulses that are recorded in paint. Her compositions hover between abstraction and figuration, the unconscious and the intentional, unbound and free, only committed to their own truth.

Martha Jungwirth recalls her situation during the making of her new works: ‘I was confronted with my own self during the pandemic, because I was completely isolated. I don’t live from reality, I live from art. The vitality of life, the sensations, all that was missing - the impressions from the outside world, from other art and artists. These interactions are very important for my work.’

In her new paintings, allusions to animals and the human body surface from the brush strokes and blotches. Jungwirth’s personal situation over the past year, and the situation globally, influenced the way she approached these new works: ‘When you are isolated you make a jigsaw puzzle out of your memories, some things are more animated and lively, they hang together like a mycelium. This context in which I had to live has had an effect on my life. My work was reduced to the gesture, the skeletal. Condensation.’

Tragedies of our time and mythology inspired her new series, particularly when she saw ‘the animals that perished miserably in the bushfires of Australia. There is something apocalyptic about that. First the animals burn, then the #people.’ The artist’s interest in Greek mythology, which she studied over the years when travelling in Naxos and Paros, enabled her for loose comparisons to the tragic aspects of the present era. She describes her journeys as ‘painting escapes’ (‘Malfluchten’) which are essential for her work, as they allow an exposure to the alien, to the ‘other’, to experience life more intensively.

Further information in the press release to download