Venice Void
- Year2022
- MaterialOil on canvas
- Dimensions400 x 205 cm
- Year of acquisition2022
- Inventory numberUAB XX
- On viewGround floor
- Copyright© Jana Euler, courtesy the artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin
More about the artwork
Images as they circulate in media and shape (male dominated) art history are seized, inflated, manipulated and disempowered in Jana Euler’s work. In the large-scale painting “Venice Void” (2022), which was first shown at the 2022 Venice Biennale, a gigantic male nude is pushed into the realm of the grotesque. Painted in a hyperrealist style, an empty white center opens up in the middle of the image. The bearded face is turned outward through this hole: its huge eyes are folded upward, the fleshy lips downward, while the ears and halves of the nose tilt to the side. The naked body, on the other hand, flees inward, so that we look down on it from the front and back. Jana Euler describes it herself: “Starting with the face, everything that is usually in the center is turned around and shown at the edges of the canvas, framing the void … With this void I tried to visualize a feeling of depth in the nothingness.” Euler’s painting is presented in the stairwell and forms a dialog with the architecture: through the maw of the museum’s body, visitors are led to the exhibition floors.
