JOHANNES LOTZ »FLUCHT DURCH L.«

In his paintings on canvas and wooden doors, Johannes
Lotz creates pictorial worlds populated by bizarre characters
who are on their way to weird places on labyrinthine paths.

Sometimes to a greater, sometimes to a lesser extent, they
seem to be leading towards familiar fairy tales, whose
stories, however, were broken by the narration’s
fragmentation and a formal inconsistency and thus remain
encrypted. Like the fairy tales bearing references to
threatening worlds one can hardly fathom, Lotz’ pieces have
a similar way of leading to fragile and ambivalent habitats
that can also offer a profound reflexion on social
mechanisms. Not only the topic of pictorial worlds but also
their process of painting is reminiscent of procedures that
we know from literature and paintings – among others from
the circle of Surrealists. André Breton first and foremost
coined the Écriture automatique, which strived for texts and
pictures created without any control through reason. In a
comparable manner, Lotz uses the power of physical
processes with which he partly breaks the controlling
perception of reality of the consciousness and then captures
and forms the result in his paintings.

The exhibition >>Flucht durch L.<< is dominated by a
large-sized main group located predominantly in an
atmospheric darkness which is frequently broken by a glow
or flickering ranging from dubious to solemn. Although the
characters’ frame of reference herein remains undefined it
almost seems like the viewer joins them in entering a
ceremonial chamber, in which the solemn atmosphere
eases the glide into another reality.

Johannes Lotz (*1975) studied at the Akademie der
bildenden Künste in Mainz, Germany, with Friedemann
Hahn as well as in Munich with Gertraud Schottenloher.

After several solo exhibitions, among others at Galerie
Michael Janssen in Berlin and Cologne as well as
Künstlerhaus Saarbrücken, the Galerie Parrotta dedicates a
second exhibition to Lotz. The exhibition is accompanied by
an artist book published by Textem Verlag / Hamburg,
available at the price of 20 euros.