Jana Schröder
Kadlites
March 16, 2019 – April 27, 2019
Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of new works by Jana Schröder. The present exhibition, Kadlites, is a continuation of the artist’s work in this series: bright, yellow canvases which find their individuality in Schröder’s frenetic gestures of lead and paint, ultimately creating unique handwritten landscapes of abstraction. This continuation is a reference to the work itself: Schröder’s practice is a meditation on process and repetition, refusing the need to derive or represent intellectual meaning solely for the sake of being meaningful. Thus the meaning, if one must define it, is not born from an individual piece, a final destination, or a simple theory. Rather, the exhibition works as a whole to represent repetitious attempts to solve artistic problems and a seemingly infinite discovery of what lines are capable of.
Undoubtedly the most striking aspect of Schröder’s Kadlites on initial glance, is their bright, luminating yellow color. The oversized canvases hang like massive post-it notes inscribed with layers of frantic information. This information is applied on top of the cadmium yellow both in acrylic paint and lead powder mixed with turpentine. Schröder uses the two mediums as marking utensils and utilizes their differences to create diversity in her lines, ultimately contributing to the depth and dimension that she accomplishes through the development of layers. Going further in this marking process, Schröder edits existing lines either with an eraser or the canvas’ foundational yellow paint, thereby creating more lines with negative space and making her corrections visible. The finished canvas maintains no clear center of composition, just incessant energy.
In essence, Schröder’s artistic practice is one of discipline, performance, and conceptual study. The idiosyncratic yellow color of the Kadlites, for Schröder, serves no aesthetic purpose. Rather, the color merely serves as an ideal foundation on which the layers of her gestural lines can build, for no other color could reveal the multitude of the canvas’ layers.
Therefore, Schröder’s study and performance is in repetition. Not only is the color yellow present in each painting but there is also the repetition of line and gesture. The production of something which is repetitive, yet at the same time exciting, is a challenge; as many consider a reoccurrence as stagnant and still. Schröder’s pieces are the opposite: the edges of her canvases hold an unremitting kinetic energy.
Jana Schröder (b.1983, Brilon, lives and works in Düsseldorf) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Prof. Albert Oehlen. She recently had a solo exhibition Spontacts and Kinkrustations at Kunstverein Reutlingen, Reutlingen Germany. Her works have appeared in exhibitions including Hausreste, Haus der Kunst Sankt Josef, Solothurn, Switzerland; L‘aventura – Die mit der Liebe spielen, Palazzo Guaineri delle Cossere, Brescia, Italy; fine line?, KIT – Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf, Spontacts, Mier Gallery, Los Angeles and ‘Spontacts FX’, T293 Milan.