Juno Rothaug's paintings develop from the field of tension between figurative reference and painterly coding. The starting point is often a figurative idea, a fragment, a pose or an art-historical motif, which is increasingly shifted, fragmented and superimposed in the painting process. Lines blur, areas of colour start to move, forms dissolve. Legibility is subverted in favour of a pictorial language that oscillates between figuration and abstraction. Rothaug is interested in the ambivalence of the image - in what is visible and what is simultaneously withdrawn. For her, encryption is not a game of hide-and-seek, but a productive moment of irritation. What is depicted always remains precarious. The painting process is characterised by an interplay of revealing and concealing, tension and relaxation, distance and closeness. The pictures are not created according to a clear preliminary drawing, but grow in an open dynamic in which touch, movement and painterly intuition become central.

Juno Rothaug (*1999) lives and works in Hamburg. She is studying painting in Anselm Reyle's class at the HFBK Hamburg.