Artist Spotlight: Oda Jaune

Born in 1979 in Sofia, Bulgaria, Oda Jaune has lived and worked in Paris since 2008. The artist uses her work to portray a tormented yet deeply poetical world. In it, images that are tender, naive and violent, occasionally erotic and funny, are mingled together as Jaune continues her frank exploration of a subconscious freed from convention. Her paintings are unsettling, putting the viewer in a position where abandon is the only option and inhibition is futile.

She paints mutilated, naked, sexless and faceless bodies. And she paints faces radiating happiness, people in paradise, people who fly. Originally from Bulgaria, Oda Jaune studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, becomes a master scholar of the painter Jörg Immendorff and later, his wife. Disturbing yet extremely poetic, according to the artist her watercolors and drawings “do not conceal any other layers, apart from the thoughts that have been directly and honestly captured.”

Often floating in a vague space, her brilliantly colored creatures are painted with virtuosity. Abstract forms swirl outward, like commentaries on painting itself—which also brings forth imaginary forms. Fired at 1200 degrees centigrade, Oda Jaune enters new territory with her life-sized porcelain sculptures, as this is her first time working in this medium. The white configurations—often torsos—which are either vessels or clasped hands, are consciously photographed in neutral colors and printed in an elaborate triplex process for this monograph. This method allows for the depth and luminosity of the new works to appear more clearly—and to reproduce them in all of their timelessness.