Over the course of three decades, German-Brazilian artist Janaina Tschäpe has developed a multidisciplinary practice encompassing painting, drawing, photography, performance, video art, sculpture, murals and installations. In her paintings and works on paper, Tschäpe presents dreamlike abstract landscapes inspired by the natural world and memory.

Balancing fluidity with precision, her work is imbued with a universality that reflects the various topographies she calls home, from Germany to Brazil and the United States. In addition to her exhibited work, Tschäpe produces drawings and sketchbooks as part of her daily practice, continuously transferring her impressions onto paper. These sketches serve not only as a foundational process for her painting, but as an autonomous, expressive medium through which she navigates the porous boundaries of abstraction and narrative.

For this exhibition, a new selection of large canvas paintings is presented across the ground floor gallery space. Composed in oil and oil stick, organic forms seem to ebb and flow with the movement of water. The reflective aspect of observation occupies the artist, posing questions on how to translate sensory experiences, noises and memories into abstraction on the canvas. 

Colours bleed and pool into one another, as if in a state of osmosis, offset by loosely drawn structures in oil stick. The artist compares the resulting layers in her paintings to the softness of the sky when viewed through silhouetted tree branches.

As well as nature, especially water and our experience of it, language in spoken word, poetry and physical expression informs much of Tschäpe’s work. Her paintings create a layered, open free flow, rather than an imposed narrative. Akin to conversation, her works allow the viewer to shift between background and foreground, first layer and last, with brushstrokes and gestures always remaining present and visible.

Evoking fragmented memories, rather than imposing a strict architecture, Tschäpe captures moods in her paintings, encouraging viewers to add their own reading. The titles of her works are drawn from poetry and literary fragments, hinting at the artist’s deep engagement with text as a generative force. Much like the precise definition of words, which are often not translatable across languages and must therefore coexist as separate meanings, the titles are often a mix of Portuguese, English and German, and offer entryways into the artist’s internal world.

“A GUSH OF WIND (ATEMRAUM)”
JANAINA TSCHÄPE
MAX HETZLER GALLERY
BERLIN, GERMANY
Through 31 January 2026
https://www.maxhetzler.com

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