WURZELBEHANDLUNG

Johanna Finckh: Root Forest

Brings forth what is both hidden and nourishing. Finally it becomes clear how meaningful what exists underground truly is. What applies to the plant world applies all the more to human beings.

With her works, Johanna Finckh opens up access to a world that is multiply sealed off, even overlooked. Her multi-layered graphic works, emerging from the root forest, show people in dramatic situations. Not their surfaces, their skin so to speak, but rather what is happening in their sensory constitution. Viewers of these nuanced works can grasp: "Yes, that's how I feel too" – and draw their own conclusions.

Johanna Finckh's works aim precisely at these hidden feelings, thereby opening up a – perhaps new – access to essential personal self-images that have long lain dormant underground. But we also get to know another sensitive artist when we engage with her rain paintings and can grasp, both seeing and listening, the theme of human loneliness in compelling dimensions. Drawings of raindrops were created while listening to the rain – recorded in sound and image. For the artist, the sound creates a feeling of home, of security. As visitors, we have the opportunity to immerse ourselves in these images and rediscover ourselves in the root forest of our own history.

Johanna Finckh's imagery works in a very subtle way, one might say: meditatively. Only through repeated viewing of the graphic works do further dimensions gradually open up, leading to a transformation of one's self-image. The works show a world of the uprooted, in other words, the homeless. I believe it is impossible to make more clearly visible what is currently happening in our country and others. Johanna Finckh believes that she can make a difference with her works, by specifically encouraging empathetic reflection.

Text: Gerhart Langthaler