The beautiful and, at times, chaotic cycles of nature are what keep Jana Moser inspired to continue looking and drawing. She finds inspiration both in the minutiae of the natural world as well as the larger forces of the universe, that in turn make us feel minute. This interconnectedness is apparent in both her artistic practice and her free-flowing demeanor. She takes potentially challenging steps with ease and channels the rhythms of earth to inform her process.
This absorption-based inquiry gets distilled and filtered and takes form as a meditative layering of oil pastel while scraping, manipulating and working into cotton rag paper. The final effect is something akin to printmaking but in its repetitive and laborious singularity resembles something more. It becomes a visual record of a slow buildup of tension and release as the pastel works its way into the fibers of the paper, gets scraped and pulled away, and ultimately interconnects the paper with the piece as a whole. The paper serves as a bed from which color and texture grow. As she puts it – ‘the more I put on, the more the paper is present’. Pastel and paper merge into one material.
Since finishing her studies in the drawing and printmaking department at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Jana has attempted to push abstraction in her work. This conscious move away from representation is an attempt to take the viewer on a more visual and visceral journey. She wants to strip any semblance to representative form that may lead the viewer’s perception astray. Visually it comes through as if she were zooming in on a landscape painting or taking a microscope to a naturally occurring lattice structure. It is a strong hint at her appreciation of natural biology and the small beauties in life.
photos by PILOTENKUECHE International Art Program
This move towards abstraction and playing with spontaneity seems to be a natural progression of where her work has been. Coming from a printmaking background but ultimately leaving the often times confining and process heavy space that printmaking requires, Jana opted for something more fluid and immediate. In further exploring this type of mark-making we can expect a more playful use of space, working on a much larger scale and a general expansion outside of the borders of the paper itself. By imposing restrictions on her practice, such as a limited color palette, limited tools, and a basis of repetitive mark-making, Jana achieves this outward experimentation with a fluidity and ease all her own.
The artist is currently preparing for the final group exhibition at the Pilotenkueche artist residency. She does so with this experimental mindset, eased by the idea of remaining in Leipzig for another 3 months. She can finalize some new ideas by jumping off the walls, playing with new color combinations and expanding the size and range of the paper she works with. All the while content that she can keep exploring the city itself while continuing her artistic journey.
written by: Adrian Rötzscher
Elsewhere a Blue Line and the Absurdity of a Ghost on a Stone
Open: Sun 19 – Sun 2 June 2019, 10AM – 6PM (closed Mondays)
Location: Kunstkraftwerk, Saalfelder Str. 8, 04179 Leipzig
Wrestling with Impermanence
Vernissage: Fri 21 June 2019, 7PM
Open: Sat 22 – Wed 26 June 2019 1PM-5PM
Location: PILOTENKUECHE, 2nd Floor, Franz-Flemming-Str. 9, 04179 Leipzig, Germany
Performance: To be announced