Pauline Hatzigeorgiou
Exhibitions, Texts, Publications, CV, About


Jana Euler, Oilopa
21.06—29.09.2024, WIELS, Brussels, BE

Over the two last decades, German artist Jana Euler (b. 1982, Friedberg) has produced a diverse though consistent body of work that diagrams painting’s social, material, and historical bases. Euler draws international attention to her uninhibited, way of pictorial invention, appropriation and rehabilitation. This monographic exhibition during summer 2024 is also a renewed invitation from WIELS to the artist in their ongoing relationship, following Euler’s earlier involvement on various occasions – such as the residency programme in 2012, the thematic exhibition Residue in 2013, or her context-specific contribution for The Absent Museum in 2017.

Entitled Oilopa, a contraction of the terms Oil (painting) and Europa, Jana Euler’s exhibition unfolds into a semi-utopian land, reversing the ascendant flows of financial statistics while extrapolating on cycles of surplus production, excess, recess and vacuity. By assuming a heterogeneity of textures, techniques and pictorial heritages, Euler pursues her approach of vitalist expressive figuration as a device giving shape to fantasied worlds. Yet, as in Oilopa, these fantasies are less engaging in an escapist reflex from the real as opening up perspectives on its perverted processes.




— Curator: Pauline Hatzigeorgiou 
— With the support of: Cabinet Gallery, dépendance, Galerie Neu, Greene Naftali