Angelika J. Trojnarski, 'Ahab', 2008
180x200 cm
Angelika J. Trojnarski, 'Sesambeine', 2007
115 x 115 cm
Angelika J. Trojnarski was born in 1979 in Mragowo, Poland, and left in 2004 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, first under Herbert Brandl and, before his death in 2007, Jörg Immendorff. Her paintings, recently on view in the US for the first time, hark back to the advent of modernism with their subdued palette, painterly handling of oils and assemblage of semi-finished and deconstructed imagery culled from an agitated sub-conscious. The echoes of post-war trauma in her work come as no surprise given the haunting legacy the Second World War bequeathed the two nations she is most closely associated with - Poland and Germany. Trojnarski reminds us that wars continue to rage on in the world, "We wear Cain's mark on our forehead. Atrocity has so become our companion we don't recognize it- even when it is standing right before us and unmasking itself.'
Writing about her exhibition in Los Angeles earlier this year, the critic Peter Frank celebrated the arrival of an outstanding young painter, saying: "A. J. Trojnarski infuses her paintings with a hefty dollop of middle-european angst and alienation without falling victim to myriad cliches. Her palette may be dank and dreary, but it glows like fog with a diffuse light and establishes a compellingly indistinct space in which figures and structures struggle to define themselves. Everything in Trojnarski's pictures has an almostness to it, with parts of machines and parts even of people fading from opacity and seeming volume to an almost gossamer transparency. The things occupying Trojnarski's cityscapes and interiors - and, indeed, the cityscapes and interiors themselves - hover in and out of existence, as if in a dream or a recollection. As Trojnarski reminds us, sight and memory are both grossly faulty modes of perception, but they're all we have with which to hold the world."
Angelika J Trojnarski's solo show in LA was at the Kinsey/DesFores Gallery in Culver City in January 2008. Next year she will have a solo show at Anna Klinkhammer Galerie, Düsseldorf. She will also take part in a group exhibition entitled 'Klasse Immendorff' in August 2008. Several of her works will be on view at the Saatchi Online booth at Scope Basel this June, where it will be possible to buy the work of a selection of Saatchi Online artists on a non-commission basis.
To see more of her work registered on Saatchi Online click here.
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