Arno Neumann, in Märkische Allgemeine
Mixed media, 108 x 164 cm, 2010
POTSDAM / BERLINER VORSTADT – 6.11.2010
One could assume they are commissioned works, so perfectly do Julia Theek’s works fit into the discreetly styled atmosphere of the business premises of the savings bank in Berliner Straße. Julia Theek’s technique for turning her motifs into images is perfect. It is an elaborate stencil technique based on airbrushing, a paint spraying process. But her technique is not an end in itself, but rather brings precise content-related intentions to bear – enigmatic, intellectually polished, with an emotionally burning coolness. Contradictions find artistic form.
Mixed media, 85 x 115 cm, 2007
In the “Military Orphanage”, the scene is immersed in a mysteriously threatening light through the colourfulness of a meticulously captured section of the façade. The history of this house finds its way to colour. The mythological figure of one of Potsdam’s unmistakable sculptures floats in front of it in a silvery hue. Is it Caritas or should it be Minerva from the Potsdam City Palace, for whose restoration Julia Theek launched an art campaign in 2007?
Stags were and are a popular motif of dubious salon painting. Julia Theek can nevertheless dare to bring deer into the picture. But what splendid creatures they are in her work “Berlin Romanticism”, which a somewhat puny Prince Pückler is trying to tame! Sculptures in light and dark meet in the painting “Berlin”, overpoweringly large, black and threateningly tilting down the Iron Cross in a laurel wreath with the eagle stretching high from the quadriga on the Berlin Brandenburg Gate.
Again and again, sculptures become actors in the pictures in painterly metamophosis. In the process, they acquire a very idiosyncratic artistic life. But that life is something else is shown by Julia Theek with a cheerful punchline in her “Spring in Sanssouci”.
Alabaster and steel, 30 x 40 cm, 2007
Fascinated by the colourful virtuosity of her paintings, the eye is repeatedly drawn to the material with which the effects are achieved. Varnishes are applied to canvas, steel, copper, brass or aluminium and unexpected colour effects are achieved.
Julia Theek’s sculptures, though few in number, are something quite special in their artistic form – a contrast to the baroque figurative scenery in her paintings. Outstanding is the “God of War”, a sacrifice of himself, simply a masterpiece in the reduction of form that reveals the essence of the matter.
Berliner Straße 52, until February 2011,
Mon.- Fri. 8am-12pm, 2pm-5pm
