BERLIN.- "When night comes", "Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow will be allright", "After the Storm", "The Silence" ...

The titles of Amélie Joos’s work provide a first glance into her imagery, which is based on autobiographical undercurrents. Through her drawings, paintings and sculptures, the artist reveals an intimate dream world, which unveils the unconscious. The characters, mostly girls or women, are isolated on an empty canvas. They are hybrid beings in bizarre situations, unlocking ambivalent emotions within the viewer. The ambiguity of her work is of great importance to the artist. In spite of its autobiographical nature however, it is intended to be informed by the viewer’s own experiences.

For Amélie Joos, the genesis of a piece may be either a word, a sentence, a picture or a situation. The mostly small-scale drawings, akin to an intimate story, are created in a kind of automatic writing ("l'écriture automatique»). Internal images are transferred directly onto the canvas, without the detour of a sketch.

"I'm a mother, I'm a woman, I'm still a child", "Bad mother", "lonely mother", "little mother”. In the "Mother” series Amélie Joos addresses the ambivalence within motherhood and female existence. The stepmother and other clichés are picked up by the artist in an ironic way and presented with a restless, nervous hand.

The wax sculptures on display are based on drawings by the artist. The material wax correlates to the subjects in its complexity (being both soft, and solid). We encounter them as fragile, yet simulataneously rock-solid characters.

Amélie Joos (*1971) lives and works in Avignon. She studied painting at Kunstakademie in Stuttgart and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art d'Avignon. In 2003, she got her master's degree in art history from the Université d'Aix-Marseille. Her work has been exhibited internationally: Musée du Montparnasse Paris, Galerie Ducastel Avignon, Chapelle de l'observance Draguignan, Galerie du Chapeau Rouge Avignon, Galerie im Griesbad Ulm, Galerie im Kornhauskeller Ulm, Association of Visual Artists Ulm, Gallery Simple Paris, Sur la Montagne Berlin, Galerie Martagon Malaucène, Collectif C3 Arles.