6 1/2 Weeks: Eliza Douglas – My Gleaming Soul

Museum Folkwang’s new exhibition format 6 1/2 Weeks kicks off with Eliza Douglas.

Douglas (b. 1984) is an artist, musician, and performer, currently studying at the renowned Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. The display 6 1/2 Weeks: Eliza Douglas – My Gleaming Soul (on show from February, 16 to April 2, 2017) presents ten new works by the New York artist.

Douglas’s large-scale paintings captivate the eye through their bold style and a striking recurrent motif: the artist’s hands. Occasionally shown in combination with a pair of feet and always depicted against a white background, the naturalistically rendered hands are the pivotal subject of her vibrant paintings. Douglas combines representational and abstract painting by creating novel transitions from one to the next.

As a trope in the history of art, the artist’s own hands have long been closely linked with the act of artistic creation. In Douglas’s work the creative hands appear to dance around the—wholly absent—body, at the end of a pair of grotesquely long arms. Douglas’s canvases provide a fresh and innovative comment on the time-honoured act of painting using paint applied with a brush. Her form of meta-painting is one of the many possible answers to the question of what painting can look like in the 21st century.

On the occasion of 6 1/2 Weeks: Eliza Douglas – My Gleaming Soul a special evening takes place at 6:30pm on Friday, February 17, featuring performances by Douglas herself, along with Daniela Leder and Hanna-Maria Hammari. Before and after the opening, DJ Fastsnorter from Frankfurt is on the turntables with an eclectic set. Admission is free.

Museum Folkwang launches its new exhibition format 6 1/2 Weeks, each time showcasing a new contemporary artist. Up to six times a year, young artists from Germany and abroad are given a platform to present their latest work for a period of just 45 days.

6 1/2 Weeks is supported by Sparkasse Essen.