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13/10/2006

Julia Schmidt

Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York

New Fabrics

Casey Kaplan is pleased to announce, “New Fabrics," the first solo exhibition in New York of the Leipzig-based painter, Julia Schmidt. For this show, Julia will present a new series of oil on MDF-board paintings. Schmidt is a key figure of a new generation of German painters whose work resists the bold gestures of her contemporaries, opting instead to focus on details, traces, and omissions.

The works in this exhibition--new fabrics--visit a panoply of subjects. Depicting both representational and abstract imagery, Schmidt portrays her aesthetic totems in muted hues with a cool, detached beauty. Inconsequential objects-- blotches, skirt hems, and debris--are painted with the same painstaking precision as 18th century portraits, baroque tables, and sumptuous leather handbags.

Working with different methods and often reclaiming discarded objects and imagery, Schmidt sidesteps the conformity of a single artistic style. Her paintings often demonstrate an old master-like attention to detail: rich impasto, tonal gradation, and high gloss surfaces. While she uses the classical technique of oil painting, her brushstrokes often appear hacked and staccato, and while her small (even miniature) formats are relatively standardized, her canvas is made from industrial chipboard—a material that lends her paintings an attitude of indifference or self-effacement.

By focusing on flawed, unstudied, and forgotten subjects, Schmidt redirects our attention to blurred backgrounds, peripheral views, and minute details. Schmidt’s appropriation of the overlooked proclaims the significance and wonder of marginal and low-key subjects, addressing her concerns with value and artifice, use and ornament. With all the paintings in the exhibition, Schmidt’s method of visual reduction alongside optical saturation posits what constitutes artistic beauty within the decadence of high art.

Julia Schmidt received her formal training at the Glasgow School of Art and the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. She was the recipient of the Arbeitsstipendium Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn e.V. and the Kunstpreis der Sachsen LB in 2006. Recent exhibitions include "Artists from Leipzig," at Arario Beijing, China in October 2006; “Criss-Cross, Five Positions in Croatian and German Contemporary Art," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia in 2005; and the 2nd Biennial of Contemporary Art in Prague. A solo exhibition at Museum der Bildenden Kunste Leipzig opens this December and will travel to Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg.

OPENING: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 6 - 8 PM

CASEY KAPLAN
525 WEST 21ST STREET NEW YORK, NY 10011
GALLERY HOURS: TUESDAY - SATURDAY, 10 - 6 PM

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