Born in 1984 in Regensburg, Johanna Strobel started studying mathematics and art education, before she switched to information science, art and aesthetic education in 2007. Starting in 2010, the young artist studied painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich with Professor Gerhard Merz, Professor Anke Doberauer and Professor Gregor Hildebrandt. In her last year, she moved over to media art with Professor Klaus vom Bruch.
From October 2014 on, she has been working with Kristina Schmidt as Kitty Joy. Together they have made video and performance art, as well ad digital and animated graphics, installations and space-consuming concepts.
Her new works, mostly out of her painting repertoire are shown in Regensburg. A kind of new trademark for the art of Johanna Strobel is the brilliant use with the non-color black and especially her handling with light and shadows in her works. In art history, the light-dark contrast, also known as chiaroscuro, has been a term since the Renaissance era, where Caravaggio, the famous artist, was the most prominent figure to deal with it.
On the large-sized pictures of Strobel darkness is residing. The deep black conquers the whole image space and every known thing seems to dissolve within it. In doing so, one has to get up close to the works to discover the green and yellow colored objects, that are prompted by a ray of light, and understand that they are banal objects such as a sponge or a bag of lemons. Besides lemons and sponges, other – preferably yellow objects, like bananas or tennis balls – are found in her masterful paintings, that embraces the viewer with a deep, velvet black color that surround the scenes.
On the smaller-sized works, the “H-series” one can find primarily round objects. All the titles of the series start with the letter “H”, which adds another fine layer of reception for the viewer.
Moons and melons, tennis balls and lemons, Johanna Strobels paintings show us a completely new and individual, but especially also a wayward view at the banal and basics of everyday life, as well as the grand schemed questions about humanity and the origin of the universe, light, darkness and color.
One question in specific, has now been answered by now: the universe’s color is “COSMIC LATTE”.
