Marginalia

Hollerei Galerie invites you to its first solo exhibition of an international artist: featuring works by Siolo Thompson (Seattle, USA). Thompson presents a body of work that processes seemingly marginal societal themes in the form of visual notes or annotations - hence the exhibition title: Thompson understands the works as records of certain events, as painted experiences that took place at a specific time, in a specific place: Marginalia.

Thompson's international background (before she ultimately settled in Seattle, USA) may have contributed to a certain sensitivity regarding the culture that surrounds her today. Arriving from Seattle, known for its democratic attitude toward art and the art market, Thompson seems perfectly suited for the thematic orientation of the Hollerei Galerie. Her carefully developed figurative formal language, as well as her thoughtful handling of painterly narratives, sustainably leads to a challenging engagement with the image. In her home base, Thompson naturally connects different mimetic forms - in book projects, video game and comic collaborations, as well as her extensive curatorial work.

The exhibited works combine comic ciphers and an „apparent mishmash of contemporary Americana" with a multitude of figurative influences. The works are both simple and natural as well as heavy and ironic; they combine seriousness with cynicism. Disposable materials become the surface for painting: Amazon packaging material as a contemporary, internationally used transport medium helps break the hegemonic spell of the painting tradition. Found comic book pages become the basis for oil paintings that also contain the artist's thoughts - in this way, Thompson once again connects mimetic modes of different media.

Perhaps the most personal group of works in the exhibition is a series of watercolors that unites a kind of „witches' circle" of supposedly ugly girls. Thompson uses faces of middle-aged men found on the internet, sitting in business meetings; these are casually placed onto the bodies of young women. The artist comments: „The works offer a caricature of that painting tradition in which middle-aged men depict the sweet beauty of pre-pubescent angels. It would be too easy to see these works as a reservation against beauty cults, or as a commentary on a misogynistic world in which ugly women are understood as second-class citizens. There are no angels, and the ugly girls remind us of the bizarre fact that regardless of all cultural distinctions and demarcations, we all become genderless, shapeless parodies of ourselves over time."