Opening on Thursday, January 29, 6–8pm

Eröffnung am 29. Januar, 18 bis 20 Uhr

The most recent work by Hedwig Eberle transports images of classical themes where lush vegetation and skin tones traverse the frame as focused traces of resistance and glare. The new series of watercolours and oil paintings inaugurated at at her fifth solo show at Jahn und Jahn, Munich, introduce color structures that are often compressed and soaked to the point of reaching nothing more than a mood, a substance, a linfa (1). In the latest years, Eberle’s research has clearly expanded toward a painting that relies on scents and consistencies, on depths and tones of different essential elements, as parts of the unified body of matter. It is very interesting then to participate, as viewers, in the rapport that Eberle has with her laboratory (2), whose traces and material are born and reborn, slowly, as by painful reincarnation - splendid and exhausted.
The subjects of her painting emerge as indistinct identities, as if they were caught in the deepest heart of the organic reality, in an arcane and primordial symbiosis. Eberle goes in that impenetrable spectrum with an inhuman confidence – every detail, every cycle of nature is blocked on supports that often consist on mounted paper – since 2016 she has been famously working on custom paper strips, that she assembles vertically or horizontally, whose impressions are later rematerialized on canvases of various formats. More generally, in her latest production, the image emerges as framed in its fullest luxuriance, insinuating the heartbreaking idea of consumption, of eros-erosion. A blink that comes after long and repeated painting sessions, and eventually, reaches the extreme threshold of beginning-and-end of life.
Eberle uses the sign and the intervention on matter as a trait d'union, as a direct welding between her sensitivity and the landscape. Her sign, unconventional and uncodified, a completely subjective projection, or "superimposition" to catch up with a term from Benoist (3), is charged with a meaning, with a quality of signification that requires a code to be deciphered. We are therefore confronted with an irresolvable expressive ambiguity, and with the realms of a poetics of incommunicability - "Whoever assumes the position of artist," Dubuffet writes, "must choose between two opposing attitudes: the social and the autistic... We firmly believe that there is an irreducible antagonism between artistic creation and the desire to communicate with the public. And it is precisely on this antagonism that all artists become entangled, refusing to fully assume that position of 'alienation' that artistic culture implies..." (4)
Therefore, at the very moment in which Eberle imprints her own existential urgency and her own conscience through her sign, and into the matter, she cannot ignore a link with history: the history of painting, without which also her gestures, and her signs, would be devoid of any value, of any poetic quality.

Francesca Lacatena. Naples, December 2025.

1) "Linfa" (Italian) translates to sap (for plants) or lymph (for the body's fluid) in English, but figuratively, it means lifeblood, nourishment, or vitality, representing something essential for life or growth, like a river being the lifeblood of a valley 
2) "Laboratorium" is a Latin word, specifically Medieval Latin, meaning "a place for work" or "workshop," derived from laborare (to work) and labor (work).
3) L. Benoist, Signes, simboles and mythes, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1973.
4) J. Dubuffet, Il sociale e l’autistico, in I valori selvaggi – Prospectus e altri scritti, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1971.


Hedwig Eberle (b. 1977 Munich, Germany), lives and works in Uffing (Germany). Studied painting at the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK, 1999-2001) and the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (AdBK, 2001-2006). Awards and residencies: 2001/2002 Residency Fellowship UIC Chicago; 2013 Cité Internationale des Arts Paris; 2014 Bavarian Arts and Literary Prize; 2017 Art Award of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. Selected exhibitions: 2025 Lacatena Fine Arts, Naples, Italy (s); 2024 Kunstverein Heppenheim, Heppenheim, Germany (s); 2024 Secci Gallery, Florence, Italy (g); 2023 Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (g); 2022 Jahn und Jahn, Munich & Lisbon (s); Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich, Germany (with Georg Fuchssteiner); 2018 Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Germany (g); 2018 Galerie Markt Bruckmühl, Germany (with Katharina von Werz); 2017 Galerie Friese, Berlin (s); 2016, 2015 & 2013 Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany (g); 2016 Centre d’art, Meymac, France (g); 2016 Warhus Rittershaus, Cologne, Germany (with Sophie von Hellermann); 2016 Kunstverein Reutlingen (s); 2015 & 2013 Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, USA (s); 2015 Städtische Galerie Gordonhaus, Cham (with Georg Fuchssteiner); 2015 & 2010 Galerie Jahn Baaderstrasse, Munich, Germany (s); 2015 Schönewald, Düsseldorf, Germany (g); 2014 Salon der Gegenwart, Hamburg, Germany (g); 2013 Kunstverein Weiden, Germany (g); 2011 Woodmill Gallery, London, UK (g); 2010 Glue Factory Glasgow, UK (g); 2007 & 2006 Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf, Germany (s).