• Janaina Tschäpe - Statement | CV | Works

Taking the female body for her muse, Janaina Tschäpe explores themes of the body and landscape, sex, death, renewal and transformation in paintings, drawings, photographs and video installations. To experience Tschäpe's work is to swim through universes of polymorphous landscapes amongst embryonic forms, ambiguous creatures and exotic botanical life. Her paintings exist in a state of their own becoming. They are systems of palimpsests; each brushstroke, a materially emphatic note, partially occludes a previous mark. In this way, forms are built and colors orchestrated through layers of accumulation. Their physically sensuous surfaces give way to topologies of finely calibrated hues. They create the sensation of being under water or wrapped up in diaphanous cloaks.

Janaina Tschäpe was born on 1973 in Munich, Germany and was raised in Sao Paolo, Brazil. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Hochschule fur Bilende Kuenste, Hamburg and her Master in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York. Tschäpe’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the world including New York, Tokyo, Saõ Paolo, London, Madrid, Paris and Berlin. Recent projects include Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Jeu de Paume, Paris, Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, The 59th Minute with Creative Time in Times Square, New York, the Centre d’Art a Albi, Tolouse, the Fotomuseum, Winthethur, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, and Kasama Nichido Museum of the Arts, Yokohama Civic Art Gallery, Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Galeria de Cultura Laura Alvim, Roger Ballen South Africa, and Instituto Paranaense de Arte, International Center of Photography Triennial. Tschäpe lives and works in New York and Rio de Janeiro.