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Janaina Tschäpe
Fictionary of Corals and Jellies, 2017
Blood, Sea, 2017

Installation view: Tidalectics, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, 2017
Photo: 2017©joritaust.com

Installation view: Oceans. Imagining a Tidalectic Worldview, 1483 Lopud | Monastery of Our Lady of the Cave, Lopud, Croatia, 2018
Photo: TBA21

Installation view: Océans. Une vision du monde au rythme des vagues, Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing, France, 2018
Photo: Eric Le Brun | Courtesy Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing

Tidalectics

TBA21–Academy

Janaina Tschäpe

Watercolor pencil on paper
Leporello: 30.5 x 21.5 x 2 cm (closed); 30.5 x 800 cm (flat)
Commissioned by TBA21–Academy

Janaina Tschäpe's work is inspired by her ongoing exchange with marine biologist and ocean explorer David Gruber, and their voyages on the oceans among others on board the Dardanella. Gruber's research focuses on marine microbial ecology and fluorescent proteins, in an attempt to understand the perception of aquatic creatures from within their own worlds and perceptual experience. In joined drawing sessions, Tschäpe creates fantastical visual worlds that oscillate between fact and fiction, springing from Gruber's accounts of deep-sea creatures and extremophiles. The process is reminiscent of artists joining exploratory voyages or creating drawings based on specimen brought back by expeditions during the 19th and 20th centuries by travelers like Alexander von Humboldt or Charles Darwin. In the exhibition Tidalectics, two Leporello's filled with drawings by Tschäpe and scientific annotations by Gruber are shown. Titles like Blood, Sea (inspired by Italo Calvino's short story) and Fictionary of Corals and Jellies (both 2017) point to the merging of an inventory and dictionary of underwater life with fictional elements, drawn up by Tschäpe from Gruber's accounts and her own personal experience and engagement with submarine worlds. During the exhibition period, two evenings with Tschäpe and Gruber saw the two create drawings and inspire each other. See link here .

Artists website

http://www.janainatschape.net

Janaina Tschäpe was born in 1973 in Munich, Germany, and was raised in São Paulo, Brazil. She received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Hochschule für Bildende Kueste, Hamburg in 1997 and her Master in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 1998. Tschäpe’s interdisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture. Incorporating elements of aquatic, plant, and human life, Tschäpe’s universe of sublime forms shift between representation, fantasy and abstraction.
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