ART CITIES:Paris-Martha Jungwirth

Over the past six decades, Martha Jungwirth has forged a singular approach to abstraction that is grounded in the body and closely observed perceptions of the world around her. With an idiosyncratic, non-conformist approach to painting, her works occupy an intuitive space that exists beyond the formation of recognisable images, “before spoken language”, “before memory” and “before the obtrusiveness of objects”.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery Archive

In contrast to the rational principles of Minimalism and Conceptualism that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, Jungwirth’s paintings convey a palpable sense of self. As she has described, ‘My art is like a diary, seismographic. That is the method of my work. I am completely related to myself. Drawing and painting are a movement that runs through me.’ She draws upon ‘pretexts’ – personal encounters, international travels, art history, Greek mythology and political events – which become the triggers for fleeting, internal impulses that are recorded in paint and watercolor. Her process is a direct rhythm involving the body, with finger marks, scratches and even shoeprints remaining as a visceral record of her presence in the work. The vivid color palette often dwells in a similarly corporeal register of fleshy pinks, blood reds and bruised magentas. For her solo exhibition Martha Jungwirth presents a new series of paintings of animal-like and abstract figures rendered with her characteristic palette of reds, violets, yellows and magentas. The works were made during the pandemic, almost like a diary of isolation, reflecting Jungwirth’s intimate connection to herself and the external world. What emerged are expressive, poetic and emotional paintings, ranging in size from smaller formats to polyptychs evoquing ancient myths, the limits of civilizations and the fragility of life. Martha Jungwirth’s work draws on various sources – the human body, travelling, art history, mythology, historical, social and political contexts – capturing fleeting, internal impulses that are recorded in paint. Her compositions hover between abstraction and figuration, the unconscious and the intentional, unbound and free, only committed to their own truth. Martha Jungwirth recalls her situation during the making of her new works: “I was confronted with my own self during the pandemic, because I was completely isolated. I don’t live from reality, I live from art. The vitality of life, the sensations, all that was missing – the impressions from the outside world, from other art and artists. These interactions are very important for my work”. In her new paintings, allusions to animals and the human body surface from the brushstrokes and blotches. Jungwirth’s personal situation over the past year, and the situation globally, influenced the way she approached these new works. Tragedies of our time and mythology inspired her new series, particularly when she saw ‘the animals that perished miserably in the bushfires of Australia. There is something apocalyptic about that. First the animals burn, then the people.’ The artist’s interest in Greek mythology, which she studied over the years when travelling in Naxos and Paros, enabled her to make loose comparisons to the tragic aspects of the present era. She describes her journeys as “painting escapes” which are essential for her work, as they allow an exposure to the alien, to the ‘other’, experiencing life more intensively. Even though Martha Jungwirth stated in the past that she paints in such a way that things can’t be identified, some of her new paintings are more openly figurative. They allude to the shapes of a dog, a horse or an ape but are coming into existence like hallucinatory manifestations born out of the unconscious. The reduced pictorial language of these works recalls the archaic preverbal world and the first lines drawn in cave paintings, acknowledging ties with the origins of art. A number of works on view are entitled “Metopen”, the small decorative friezes and spaces in between the supporting features of Greek temples. They possibly exteriorize the idea of missing visual links and junctions for imaginary structures, emerging from Jungwirth’s fluid painterly process, constantly seeking a transition from a material to a transcendent world. Some of the titles of her recent paintings reference heroes and gods from Greek mythology, such as the philosopher and early psychotherapist Antiphon, the Andromache and Hades, god of the dead and king of the underworld. In the paintings, mythological human tragedies, rendered in abstract forms that echo fragmented bodies, coexist with animal-like figures. For instance, her three largest works in the exhibition “La Grande Armée, Tutenchamon and Hades” depict a group of phantomatic skeletal animals, at a halt, facing an uncertain destiny suspended in Limbo and on their way into other worlds. The smaller paintings, “Bukefalos” and “Marengo”, present the legendary war horses of Alexander the Great and Napoleon as fragile primeval and timeless silhouettes, caught in transition. The emblematic horses are not captured as heroic relics of a glorified past but as sacrificed witnesses of the wars, tragedies and natural catastrophes that have occurred over time, hinting at the violence and cruelty perpetuated in the course of different civilizations.

Photo: Martha Jungwirth, Untitled, 2020, Oil on paper on canvas, 144.5 x 208.5 cm, © Martha Jungwirth, Courtesy the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery

Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, 7 Rue Debelleyme, Paris, France,  Duration: 4/9-16/10/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-sat 10:00-19:00, https://ropac.net