Maja Vukoje

• 12.09.–31.10.2007

Galerie Martin Janda is showing new works by Maja Vukoje from September 12 until October 31, 2007.

The central painting in Maja Vukoje’s third solo exhibition at the gallery is spectacular: shades of gold, stark contrasts. But it is also a painting which demonstrates extreme restraint: classical composition, serene figures, and characterized by a limited palette. Wetland (2007) depicts four figures: a man and a woman in two different poses — they are standing, crouching or balancing on rocks which jut out from a glistening, golden waterscape. They resemble sculptures on pedestals. It seems as if it would be difficult, almost impossible, for them to change positions, they are so accurately tied to their poses. “I gave the figures a light coat of spray paint to dehumanize them — now they bring to mind ghosts or archetypes which create, when media images come into play, something of a collective shadow.” (Maja Vukoje)

The heterogeneity of Vukoje’s new paintings catches the viewer off guard. These canvases are not parts of a series, not simply carrying out a thematic approach which must be pursued to the bitter end, but are vigorous individual works in which longing is perhaps the only common denominator. A number of references to earlier groups of works can be detected: on the one hand, from the caricature-like paintings dating to the early 1990s, which brought Maja Vukoje acclaim immediately following her studies in Maria Lassnig’s master-class, but, to the same extent, to elements of her long-term involvement with physicality and the inner and outer fragility of the human psyche. Maja Vukoje takes these new works a step further, not just their contents, but also the paining technique. The compositions have become more dense, signs of a narrative turn up, only to be violated or destroyed.

In Sangoma (2007) three young women sit in a fanciful desert and rock landscape. They are holding poles in their hands; the expression on their faces seems detached from the world, akin to the utmost concentration required for an initiation ritual. “The landscape serves as carrier of the plot: a sanctuary in which man senses being a part of a whole, of nature, whereby landscape is also a manipulated excerpt of nature. By replacing an interior stage with an outdoor landscape, I would like the imaginary to seem real.” (Maja Vukoje)