Janaina Tschäpe’s multidisciplinary work embraces aquatic, plant, and human life, exploring the transformation of sensuous forms evocative of the natural world. Spanning painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture, her sublime visual language dwells within the nebulous space between representation and abstraction. She seeks a ‘fluid dialogue between drawing and painting, both melting into each other’, wherein her compositions and landscapes feature colourful amorphous shapes and organic structures layered, overpainted and drawn upon each other in carefully calibrated hues. Interested throughout her artistic practice in the experience of being underwater and how dimensions and perspective are lost, the sea is featured prominently in her photographs and videos, with floating creatures reminiscent of jellyfish or squid, and women’s bodies entangled with flowing fabric and balloons.
Brazilian-German artist Janaina Tschäpe (1973, Munich) lives and works in New York. She received her BFA from Hochschulen für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK), Hamburg (1997) and MFA from School of Visual Arts, New York (1998). Her work is in collections including Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MAM Rio – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro; Museu Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; S.M.A.K. – Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo; among others.