Martha Jungwirth Herz der Finsternis

The Fondazione Giorgio Cini presents an exhibition of new works by Austrian artist Martha Jungwirth, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, and supported by Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, coinciding with the 60th Venice Biennale. Over her career of six decades, Jungwirth has forged a singular approach to abstraction that is grounded in the body and closely observed perceptions of the world around her. The artist draws upon ‘pretexts’ that become the triggers for fleeting, internal impulses that inform her vivid, expressive paintings. In Herz der Finsternis, Jungwirth takes Joseph Conrad’s eponymous 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, as the starting point for her recent body of work.

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The exhibition’s German title references Conrad’s book, which Jungwirth read as a young woman. It tells the fictionalised story of a Belgian steamboat expedition up the Congo River and explores the darkness and brutality of European colonialism in Africa at the time. After visiting the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, a building constructed for the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, the tale found its way back into Jungwirth’s mind.

 

Martha Jungwirth

Ohne Titel (Kongo), aus der Serie "Porte Dorée", 2023

Oil on paper on canvas
142 x 242 cm (55.91 x 95.28 in)

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Deeply moved by what she saw, her visit to the museum inspired this latest series of paintings titled Porte Dorée. She explains: ‘The subjects of migration and persecution have taken on a completely different reality for me. It disturbed me, this long history of displacement, and how it is still going on today.’

Martha Jungwirth

Ohne Titel (Das Bündel I), aus der Serie "Porte Dorée", 2023

Oil on paper on canvas
242 x 250.3 cm (95.28 x 98.54 in)

With a wide range of painterly gestures, Jungwirth distils her experience to its purest essence, giving her feelings and impressions form through her work. ‘The paintings I am showing were made directly after my trip to Paris and my emotions and my memories were still very current and alive in me.’

 

Martha Jungwirth

Ohne Titel (Das Bündel II), aus der Serie "Porte Dorée", 2023

Oil on paper on canvas
241.5 x 170 cm (95.08 x 66.93 in)

Known for a palette that dwells in a corporeal and sensuous register of fleshy pinks and reds, the unexpected lush green and petrol tones of her latest works reference the dense green landscape of the Central African rainforest, which is described in vivid detail in Heart of Darkness: ‘The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants.’ As is typical of Jungwirth’s work, some areas of ground are left bare, allowing the texture of her cardboard supports to appear – for empty space is as important to her as colour.

Martha Jungwirth

Ohne Titel, aus der Serie "Porte Dorée", 2023

Oil on paper on canvas
218.5 x 236.5 cm (86.02 x 93.11 in)

Characterised by decisive brushstrokes, Jungwirth’s work is poised somewhere between intuition and calculation, balancing representation and sheer materiality. Although residing primarily in abstraction, recognisable elements often emerge from her dynamic marks. 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.

 

Martha Jungwirth

Ohne Titel, aus der Serie "Porte Dorée", 2023

Oil on paper on canvas
242.5 x 200.1 cm (95.47 x 78.78 in)

 

As she has described, ‘My art is like a diary, seismographic. That is the method of my work. Drawing and painting are a movement that runs through me.’ She describes her painting process as an ‘adventure,’ driven by a direct rhythm involving the body, with finger marks and scratches asserting a visceral record of her presence in the work; ‘my painting is action and passion: a dynamic space.’

Martha Jungwirth

Ohne Titel, aus der Serie "Porte Dorée", 2023

Oil on paper on canvas
242 x 276.5 cm (95.28 x 108.86 in)

The Porte Dorée series spans both expansive large-scale works and smaller paintings, which are no less charged with physical intensity. For the artist, the large and smaller formats each hold their specific advantage. She alternates between them as she works, which allows for a ‘fluid painting process’. As Jungwirth describes: ‘When you work on a large format, there is less density, you have the feeling that options are open and there is room to do more – until suddenly you can’t go on, there are no more blotches!’ By turning, then, to the smaller formats she is able to transfer the energy that is still inside of her to continue on a smaller scale. ‘Once that is spent as well, I can return to the large work. I then have the strength and the confidence to finish the large painting and, at one point, step away and leave it as it is.’

Martha Jungwirth

Ohne Titel (Quai Branly), 2023

Oil on paper on canvas
241.5 x 300.5 cm (95.08 x 118.31 in)

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