JO VAN DE LOO

Our perception is based on the phenomenon of pattern recognition, and Monika Michalko plays on this claviature like a virtuoso. The pictures have something musical about them, their fabulous forms inhabit a rhythmic space. Like punctuation, they appear in rows beside one another, or on top of one another, giving her paintings a distinct rhythm, lending them an intonation like a kind of poetic visual melody. Her motifs are strangely intricate, dreamlike and alien, displaced to an empire of dark shadows and blazing worlds of colour. And openings, again and again. Doors, windows, holes, that invite one to dive in even deeper, another puzzle, another possibility for interpretation presents itself. In the production process, figurative beginnings are repeatedly painted over. This gives rise to a dense, impenetrable patina, traces are smudged, covered, and shine through. The layers of interpretation even grow into the depth of the paint applied, charge her paintings with a metaphysical level, compress and shift the interpretation options into the invisible. Michalko’s work is, in the best sense, a summoning of the spirits in which she spins her very own plasma strings, a colourful carry on, and a wonderfully melodious gibberish.

Monika Michalko was born 1982 in Falkenau (CZ) and lives and works in Berlin. From 2003 to 2009 she studied at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg under Prof. Norbert Schwontkowski and recieved her diploma in 2009. 2006/07 Michalko went to the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Marseille, Marseille, France. SOLO EXHIBITIONS (selected) 2021 LABORATOIRE LAPIDAR Produzentengalerie Hamburg – 2020/2021 La Vie En Rose, JO VAN DE LOO, MUNICH — 2020 HERE IN THE REAL WORLD, SP2, Berlin — 2019 Various Others with Lorenz Strassl, JO VAN DE LOO, Munich — 2018 VEYLON, Galerie Maïa Muller, Paris, FR — 2017 Eine ganz schöne Sucherei, Stadtscheune Otterndorf by grifelkunst — Vereinigung Hamburg, Otterndorf, DE — 2016 Bleiben will ich, wo ich nie gewesen bin, Kunstverein Jesteburg, DE — New Positions, Art Cologne, DE — 2015 Nur nicht mit beiden Beinen auf der Erde stehen, Galerie im Marstall, Ahrensburg, DE — 2014 Monika Michalko, Produzentengalerie Hamburg, DE — 2013 Spirolina, Kunstverein Uelzen, DE — 2012 Monika Michalko. Namalovala, Kunsthaus Hamburg, DE — 2011 Keiner sieht alles, Produzentengalerie Hamburg, DE — 2009 Sileni Lestra, HfbK Hamburg, DE

In May 2011, Jo van de Loo founded his gallery, opposite the Museum Brandhorst and the Pinakothek der Moderne in the center of the art quarter in Munich. The program features upcoming national and international young artists working in painting, photography and installation. From the very beginning, the close cooperation with the artists as well as the content-related examination of the artistic forms of expression have been central to the understanding of the gallery’s work.