Jan-Luka Schmitz. Embryonze

We are excited to announce our first exhibition with Jan-Luka Schmitz (b.1992 Düsseldorf) which features seven new paintings by the artist. 

In Jan-Luka’s oeuvre, seeing isn’t always believing. His paintings stand at the intersection between figuration and abstraction whilst the work’s narratives invite further speculation rather than providing a definitive meaning. 

A common thread that runs through his body of work is the intriguing and oxymoronic relationship between tragedy and humour, as his characters find themselves in the midst of catastrophic situations or they are a symbol themselves for disorder. His paintings are deep explorations of the relationship between space, dimension, movement and volume within narrative frameworks. 

Jan-Luka graduated in 2019 from the Academy of Fine Arts (Kunstakademie) in Düsseldorf, where he still resides. There, he studied under Professor Andreas Schulze and became his master student. He was a guest with Dietmar Lutz and Thomas Scheibitz. 

“In my pictures, you see the men in a considerable struggle with themselves, the outcome of which is uncertain. In any case they look painful. It is also important to offer a positive way out of these pictures. One possibility is a humorous perspective on such a figure. This does not mean that I want to trivialize something, on the contrary I imagine that this will make a feeling of discord even more memorable. A frequent reaction to my pictures is that one  does not know whether to laugh or cry.” 
Jan-Luka Schmitz