A Painting Cycle – Julia Schmidt
Julia Schmidt, A Painting Cycle. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Julia Schmidt, A Painting Cycle. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Julia Schmidt, Untitled (floor), 2011. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Courtesy Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York and Meyer Riegger, Karlsruhe/Berlin. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Julia Schmidt, A Painting Cycle. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Julia Schmidt, Lavoro (lexicon of painting), (detail), 2011. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Courtesy Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York and Meyer Riegger, Karlsruhe/Berlin. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Julia Schmidt, A Painting Cycle. Installation view, Nomas Foundation, Rome. Ph. Giuliano Pastori
Curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni
March 22nd - April 3rd, 2012
Opening March 22nd, 2012 from 6.30pm
Nomas Foundation, viale Somalia 33, Rome
For the second episode of A Painting Cycle, on Thursday 22 March, the German artist Julia Schmidt will present a selection of works - some of them which have been realized during her residency period in Rome at Villa Massimo - that relate to the idea of the everyday, the vernacular, and the peripheral, while addressing the concepts of seduction, resistance, and value.
Julia Schmidt will be in conversation with Rita Kersting, art historian, former Director Kunstverein fuer die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Duesseldorf (2000-2006) curator abc-about painting, art berlin contemporary 2011 Berlin.
After A Performance Cycle (2010) and A Film Cycle (2011), again this spring Nomas Foundation's programme will be marked by a project taking the form of a cycle as a mode of presentation that aims to explore specific languages within art declined in their different nuances and forms.
A Painting Cycle reflects on painting, a language that the public tipically identifies as art tout court and that is today, increasingly gaining space, attention and momentum.
What does painting mean today? How did it change - if it has - in dialogue with the variety of media that in the past century artists have adopted? Is it still possible to speak about style, technique or use the term ‘representation’? With which awareness is painting addressed at the present moment?
These and many more are the themes of A Painting Cycle, which aims to confront the public with a dialectic of positions on a specific language rather than with a solution.
Every two weeks from March 8, chapter after chapter, Nomas Foundation becomes a picture gallery hosting conversations, workshops and a thematic library open to the public.
Through a selection of works, the five invited artists, offer different positions of the interpretation of painting, addressing specific aspects and key terms that will be discussed in a public conversation with an art critic invited by them.
As part of their presentation, the artists have been asked to indicate an art work /monument of the city that has had a particular influence within her or his artistic research, all of them together drawing a virtual map of the cultural heritage inscribed in the city of Rome.
In addition to this, A Painting Cycle is accompanied by a workshop lead by artist Alessandro Sarra, which intertwines with the exhibition programme and constitutes yet another point of view on what painting means today. The workshop Progettare un cielo offers a visionary approach through which to consider the very fabric of painting, and is organized in ten weekly appointments abridging Nomas Foundation, the artist’s studio, and some museums of Rome. The material produced during the workshop will be posted regularly on Nomas’ website.
Julia Schmidt, born in Wolfen, Germany in 1976. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art and Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig.
Solo exhibitions (selected): Economies of Hygiene, Meyer Riegger, Berlin (2010); STOKROOM, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2009); Lavoro, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York (2008); Tourism and Painting, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig (2007); New Fabrics, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York (2006).
Group exhibitions (selected): 
Die Villa Massimo zu Gast im Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2012); about painting, abc art berlin contemporary, Berlin (2011); Control, Magazine 4, Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz (2011); Trouble with Realism, KOW, Berlin (2009); Freisteller, Villa Romana Preisträger 2008, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2008).
Upcoming shows include Made in Germany Two, Kestner Gesellschaft, Sprengel Museum Hannover, Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover and Meyer Riegger Karlsruhe (solo).
Media partner: CURA