Adriana Czernin

• 16.01.–23.02.2013

Galerie Martin Janda is showing new works by Adriana Czernin from January 16 to February 23, 2013. Since 2009, the artist has been creating a new group of works titled Investigation of the Inside. Galerie Martin Janda is pleased to announce the first-time exhibition of a selection of these works.

The title refers to Adriana Czernin’s aim to discover, capture and express psychological processes. The works are connected with each other through the interplay between individual forms and their shadows, foreground and backdrop, surface and depth. The picture-puzzle ambiguity allows for the detection of transitions from consciousness to unconsciousness and from the visible to the invisible. Czernin furthermore examines both ornamental and non-ornamental forms, their readability, changeability and multitude of variation.

In approaching this particular set of topics Czernin makes use of different genres, abstract and representational depictions. Portrait en face and Selfportrait (watercolour, pencil and ink) are “Attempts at portraits”, as Czernin calls them. While their structure is classic, the faces are no longer recognizable; they are concealed by abstract forms. The onlooker sees only body fragments which enable an allocation, whilst, at the same time, the expressive gesture of disguise dismantles inner conditions, thereby making visible the attempt of hiding and withdrawing oneself.

Even though they are characterised as portraits by their titles, works such as Portrait Purple or Portrait Brown go one step further and refuse to be subject to an ordinary reading. A monochrome, abstract form winds itself around a black, jagged form of clear lines which was developed from an ornament. This form seems to have limbs, is organic, but no longer distinguishable as a clear figure. The way the body seems to be wedged into the sharp-edged ornament, appears threatening and dangerous. And even though Czernin distorts and abstracts the forms to an unrecognisable state, she achieves different possibilities of interpretation through arrangement and variation.
In the six-part series Me and Others the artist completely refrains from physical representations. Ornaments interlock and stand out only through differing colouration. Czernin uses a number of various techniques: Intensively applied black pencil connotes the hardness of metal and is countered by the velvety materiality produced by watercolours. “This way, a violent dance emerges or a game of geometrical gestures” (Adriana Czernin)