Dittrich & Schlechtriem is pleased to introduce the work of Katarina Janeckova Walshe for the 9th installment of our weekly programming Berliner Luft on view through Saturday, July 18th. This is the artist’s first presentation in Berlin, after joining the gallery this past spring.

Preceding her solo show, Secrets of a Happy Household, scheduled for November 2020, Janeckova Walshe presents a series of works on paper in variations of ink, pencil, watercolor, and acrylic that conceptually couple a candid reality with psychological fantasy. She uses honesty, fantasy, and humor in her painting practice as tools of survival, the key to a tongue-in-cheek “happy household.”

The works installed in the upstairs gallery feature women in acts of domestic doing. They are depicted doing the dishes or doing the laundry, for example. Janeckova Walshe pairs these scenarios with acts of giving, of familiar nurturing, like breastfeeding, necessary quarantine haircuts, or more intimate exchanges including spankings or hand (foot) jobs. After doing and giving come receiving, self-care, spa massages, and anilingus. These scenes sometimes occur all at once, simultaneously and fantastically.

Stylistically varied, Janeckova Walshe’s works on paper can be linear and quick diaristic depictions of married everyday life. Others are patterned and layered, symbolic and allegorical, articulating a larger narrative on identity, femininity, and the complexities of power. Bears, snakes, or dogs stand in for men, while women remain in focus and control. Deliberately, often provocatively, the artist and her subjects direct the viewer’s gaze, allowing a connection to and reflection on his or her own sexuality, identity, and history.

Katarina Janeckova Walshe (b. Bratislava, Slovakia, 1988) currently lives and works between Corpus Christi, Texas, and New York City. The artist has shown actively since 2010 and completed her master’s at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in 2013.

Our next Berliner Luft artist will be announced on Sunday, July 19th. Gallery summer hours are Mon–Sat, 11 AM–6 PM. We will be open on Sunday, July 26th, as part of INDEX Berlin’s SUNDAY OPEN monthly event.