Press release Julia Haller

Press release
JULIA HALLER
Smile from the Streets You Hold
November 20, 2015 – January 31, 2016
Press conference: Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 10 a.m.
Opening: Thursday, November 19, 2015, 7 p.m.
Julia Haller engages with conventions and the history of painting, trying to leave it behind in her own
work.
Her exhibition Phtata at Cologne’s Reisebürogalerie in 2012 presented canvases strangely distorted as
though the fabric were stretched too tightly. Bulking out from the wall, they took on an object-like character, defying the flatness that defines painting as a medium. Working with thin translucent paints on
primed canvases, Haller, who studied textual sculpture with Heimo Zobernig at the Academy of Fine Arts
Vienna, had painted ornamental patterns based on elemental geometric shapes or fields that stood out
from the backdrop.
The artist’s repertoire of materials ranges from bone and rabbit-skin glues across shellac, acrylic paints,
and gouaches to iron-oxide pigment. In a series of small-format untitled works (2014) that were on view
in the exhibition Passion at Galerie Christian Andersen and other venues, canvas painted with a deep
black iron oxide is set behind glass to produce a strongly reflective and iridescent violet-blue surface in
which fields and lines only gradually reveal themselves—almost as though they did not want to be discovered.
Two concurrent exhibitions Haller presented in Vienna in 2014—one at Galerie Meyer Kainer’s Boltenstern-Raum, the other at Diana Lambert—featured another untitled ensemble of works: a series of
drawings transferred onto mineral composite panels, where they emerged as engraved lines filled with
color. The show at Boltenstern-Raum consisted of the pictures the artist had drawn with her right hand;
the left-handed “matches” were on view at Diana Lambert, their absence from the former exhibition
marked by blank spaces on the wall between the pictures.
For her first institutional solo exhibition in Austria, Julia Haller has produced a new series of graphic
works on mineral composite boards, whose surfaces she treats by milling, applying pigments, and other
techniques. The artist’s interest in creating a situation in which works of art can be perceived both as
self-sufficient and as mutually complementary—in which the display is more than the sum of its parts—is
accommodated by the presentation of her works in different rooms at the Secession. Subtle interventions
further manipulate the visitor’s perception of the rooms in which the works are on view.
Invited by the board of the Secession
Curator: Jeanette Pacher
Julia Haller
Julia Haller, born in Frankfurt/Main in 1978, lives and works in Berlin and Vienna.
Awards:
2015 Kardinal-König-Kunstpreis of the Archdiocese Salzburg
Solo exhibitions:
2014 Passion, Christian Andersen, Kopenhagen; Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna; Diana Lambert, Vienna;
2013 Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin; 2012 Phtata, Reisebürogalerie, Cologne
Group exhibitions:
2015 Das unbekannte Meisterwerk, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna; The Faber–Castell International Drawing
Award exhibition, Neues Museum, Nuremberg; Green Postcard, ibid Projects, London; 2013 Julia Haller
and Christian Lotz, Christian Andersen, Kopenhagen; Julia Haller und Astrid Wagner, Galerie Praterstraße, Berlin; The Program, Courtney Blades, Chicago; 2012 Julia Haller and Saskia Te Nicklin, Christian
Andersen, Kopenhagen; Very abstract and really figurative, Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna; Die/DerWürfel/
Le dé (II), COCO, Wien; Sleepwalking, Freies Museum Berlin, Berlin; 2011 … FROM EREWHON TO HERE
KNOWS WHEN…, Kunstverein Schattendorf; making and art, Stadtgalerie Schwaz
Publication
The artist’s book Peter, with an essay by Alexander Hempel, will be published in conjunction with the
exhibition.
Julia Haller
Peter
16 pages
Format : 297 x 210mm
Softcover
Text: Alexander Hempel
German / English
Secession 2015
Vertrieb: Revolver Verlag
EUR 9,-
List of Works
Galerie (from right to left)
Ku Ku, 2015
Pigment, acrylic, varnish on mineral composite board
64.4 x 47.1 cm
Ku Ku, 2015
Pigment, acrylic, varnish on mineral composite board
66.9 x 47.8 cm
Ku Ku, 2015
Pigment, acrylic, varnish on mineral composite board
60.8 x 45.8 cm
Ku Ku, 2015
Pigment, acrylic, varnish on mineral composite board
67.1 x 45.1 cm
Ku Ku, 2015
Pigment, acrylic, varnish on mineral composite board
66.6 x 45.1 cm
Ku Ku, 2015
Pigment, acrylic, varnish on mineral composite board
59.2 x 42.1 cm
Ku Ku, 2015
Pigment, acrylic, varnish on mineral composite board
64 x 42.1 cm
Grafisches Kabinett
untitled, 2015
Plasterboard, cotton
44 x 31 x 29 cm
Courtesy Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna; Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin; Christian Andersen, Copenhagen
Press images
Installation views for download
http://www.secession.at/presse
Contact
Katharina Schniebs
T. +43 1 587 53 07-10
F. +43 1 587 53 07-34
E-Mail: [email protected]
secession
Vienna Secession, Association of Visual Artists
Friedrichstraße 12, A-1010 Vienna, Austria
T. +43-1-587 53 07, F. +43-1-587 53 07-34
[email protected], www.secession.at
Tuesday – Sunday 10 am – 6 pm
Permanent presentation: Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze
Public funding and supporters:
Cooperation-, media partners, sponsors:

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