JULIA ROMMEL

“I am constantly battling to resist my innate obsessiveness. The small, monochromatic paintings I started making in 2010 came by total accident; I was preparing surfaces with a black ground and stretching them for some other, preconveived purpose. But I realized that some of them were finished paintings without needing another touch. Embracing them in all of their default unfussiness was crucial. I’ve been searching for similar suprises to thwart my own hand ever since. I set myself up for these by assigning processes in which a lot of the mark-making becomes out of my control– it happens as I fold the linen, hide parts of a painting behind the stretcher bars, let the physical structure do the work. Forms and lines appear that are more interesting to me and much looser than ones I would have consciously laid down. If I catch myself tinkering with details too much, I’m pretty sure I’m killing the paintings energy. As soon as things start to feel too controlled, I try to throw the painting back into the unknown, usually by re-stretching it and covering all sides with paint.”

- Julia Rommel (in conversation with Rebecca Bengal, December 2020)

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Julia Rommel (b. 1980, Salisbury, Maryland) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Rommel received an MFA from American University, Washington D.C., USA.

Julia Rommel have had solo exhibitions at STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo, Norway; Bureau, New York, USA; MASSIMODECARLO, Paris, France; Overduin & Co., Los Angeles, USA; Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, USA. Her works have been included in group exhibitions at Beacon, New York, USA; Artists Space, New York, USA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK; FLAG Art Foundation, New York, USA; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, USA.

Her works are included in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, USA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; KADIST, Paris, France and San Francisco, USA; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway.