In her new works on paper Anya Belyat Giunta (1975) focuses on the secret garden. A symbolic place that we know as a primeval garden, garden of the Hesperides, garden of Eden or heavenly paradise, where the mystery of existence is hidden and our deepest desires and fears emerge. The gardens have exuberant vegetation and are bathed in an intense yellow light in which creatures appear that are both bizarre and touching. In other drawings, grotesque faces and bodies with bulging shapes transform into a kind of intimate landscapes that emerge as if in half-sleep. Anya Belyat Giunta sees them as territories of the soul hidden behind the directly perceptible.
Diederik Gerlach (1956) recently made a series of brush drawings in brown bistre tones in which he reinterprets well-known German landscapes such as the banks of the river Rhine or the Harz mountains. Compared to his precise paintings on panel they have a free and dynamic brushwork that brings movement to the image.
You could compare them with the Seelenlandschaften by Caspar David Friedrich in which the inner thoughts and emotions of the artist are mirrored in the landscape. As is often the case in his work, Gerlach incorporates elements like vertical lines or a dynamic wire figure into the image, which gives an alienating effect to the familiar landscapes.
Dan Zhu (1985) switches from a macro to a micro level in her work and applies parallel perspectives to reveal hidden energies in nature. Her images have something magical, ears turn into butterflies and seeds spread wavy lines that scan an interior. The so called Spirit Resonance from traditional Chinese painting is important; not the scientifically accurate representation is paramount, but the essence of an object or figure must be captured. For Dan Zhu, Western and Asian art are equally valuable, they are different paths that lead to the same goal. In her own words: “Curators or art historians are always swimming along the river, but artists are jumping all over the place.”