JULIA WINTER SERIES

The chilly set, evoked by the absence of people, not only articulates grand themes like mortality, but in the absence of people, the installation evokes a death-in-life air. They can also conceal time by covering an electric clock. The ampoules are used as material that may conceal an objects’ history by covering a portrait or the tiny shoes of a child. In a wider context this installation refers to the often neglected aspects of modern society such as alienation, loneliness and addiction. Morphine not only helps to suppress anxiety of death or of physical and psychological pain, it also serves as a mind-altering escape from reality. Used in an installation they raise questions given that morphine has multiple connotations. The ampoules are used to cover objects, and to alienate them from their usual or emotional sphere. The cold glass of the ampoules gives off a shiny, crystal brightness enhanced by lamps. Julia Winter presented these two- and three-dimensional works at the Museum van Bommel van Dam in 2012.

JULIA WINTER SERIES

The use of light and its reflections is exploited in a series of works incorporating morphine ampoules. These works from The Washington Post not only refer to censorship but also to the aesthetics of abstract art. They remind us of the floating squares and rectangular forms in Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist paintings. Covering parts of newspapers in black and white was a common phenomenon in Russia whenever the censor tried to protect the readers from inappropriate views and ideas.By using black rectangles the page becomes an abstract composition.

By orchestrating the information the viewer becomes aware of the powers of manipulation. The limited information provided by the artist compels the viewer to bring his or her own imagination to match the images.

In these instances the black or the coloured rectangles were like abstract elements that covered the text or image. In some cases she painted over columns or photographic images. She began to manipulate the original information. It was chosen because it suggests that we (the readers of newspapers or other media) are connected in the here and now, but we are disconnected because we misunderstand each other’s mind-set. Julia Winter collected 194 newspapers from all over the world which she covered with objects, images or paint. By juxtaposing two identities, Winter composes two overlapping images of faces which is at the same time a play of forms, colours and perspectives. In the media, we see a huge number of different faces and in our cities we experience new national and ethnic mixtures. At a time when emigration has become a common phenomenon, we have to accept an ongoing negotiation and exchange between irreconcilable differences. It results in a hybrid picture that emerges from bringing together disparate elements. By presenting the two worlds in a single composite portrait the otherness is emphasised and raises questions about how we judge the other. It is clear that the two images come from two completely different worlds.

She represents a social class that can commission a portrait. They differ in gender, time of origin, The boy looks quite self-conscious whilst the woman is decorous. For example, in Young Lust, the face and upper part of the body of a young boy in a t-shirt covers an image of a seventeenth-century lady in a black gown. In Julia Winter’s double portraits the two personalities blend together, even if they come from totally different worlds. Suddenly we seem to participate in the portrait and it challenges us to look more closely. What’s more, the reflection in the glass may well add our own reflection to the mix. Walking from one end of the picture to the other, the two layers differ slightly depending on the angle from which we look at the underlying image. This means that we look through the first layer at the second one and thus end up seeing and recognising a mash of two portraits. They are often 'double portraits' in which the first transparent image is mounted on glass or Plexiglas whilst the second portrait is affixed to the underlying surface of the frame. In her portraits she uses photographic images or images of older paintings. Julia Winter explores the phenomenon of the portrait and, more specifically, how we perceive the other.

Julia winter