Galerie Xippas is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition by German-born, New York-based, Brazilian artist Janaina Tschäpe.
Tschäpe’s explosive new series of drawings continues her ongoing investigation of gestural expression and its ability to describe metaphysically charged spaces that go above and beyond our material understanding of the natural world.

As always, her work functions at a variety of scales, expanding and contracting the viewer’s point of reference from micro, sub-atomic particles to the cosmic and metaphysical scale of the classic Romantic landscape. In many ways, these drawings are not only Impressionistic representations of natural landscapes, but due to their almost heroic scale and the wandering eye of the viewer, like Monet’s ‘Nymphéas’, they are landscapes in and of themselves. These are thick, enveloping formal gardens of entire ecosystems – where life blossoms and flourishes, only to decay and die (or perhaps breathe new life). There is an acute, iridescent use of light –articulated by an unconventional palette suggesting South American flora and fauna – compounded by the matt surfaces of dry media on paper, materials absorbing the viewer into the physical support as it pulls the viewer into its open-ended narrative. Time eerily stands still, even as we contemplate forms which seem to grow and catch us in its thickets. The effect is simultaneously light due to its soft and comforting mammalian nature, and almost threatening in its ability to remind us that nature can overwhelm the physical body.