516 | 2024

About the work

A golden-yellow ground, almost honey-coloured in places and lightened to pale white gold in others, forms the field of light of this large format. From the upper left corner a swarm of small blossoms drifts diagonally across the surface, dense at first, then looser, as if carried by a breeze. On closer inspection signs detach themselves from the swarm: the JG monogram, crowns, anchors and small hares, dabbed in midnight blue and grey. In “516 | 2024” Juliane Golbs combines the visual language of her personal coat of arms with the series Fifth Season, in which light appears as a quiet knowledge of the present. Painted in acrylic on canvas, the picture achieves its glow through gradations of colour alone. The pairing of golden tone and scattered ornament evokes the tradition of the gold ground as well as the patterned surfaces of Viennese Modernism, without quoting them. At 150 × 200 cm the work asks for distance; up close it tells its story in details, from afar it reads as a warm glow in the room.