on hold on II

Excerpt of the exhibition text:
For her exhibition ON HOLD ON at Städtische Galerie Cordonhaus Cham Johanna Strobel extensively transformed the space. Now peepholes open up unfamiliar perspectives on satellite dishes, distorting mirrors, or an index finger pointing back to the observer where windows used to be. Trompe l'oeil wall paintings of doors create the perfect illusion of additional rooms.
Johanna works with the room, not against it. Directly referring to the terracotta floor of the Renaissance building, Johanna Strobel shows terracotta multiples, which seem as if the floor itself has produced the sculptures. The terracotta or brick motif is also found on the pillowcases of the museum stools or the curtain through which, as through the wall, one of the rooms has to be entered.
Johanna’s paintings do not depict real spaces or possible architectures in which narrative situations take place; her sculptures open up a linguistic space rather than a spatial one. She develops abstract scenes that are both axiomatic and enigmatic, and in which different forms and elements meet. Her own idiosyncratic logic and her use of strange structures, which often emerge from dreamlike or surreal situations, serve her as a mental springboard. She uses a pool of recurring motifs like hands, tennis balls, bananas or door handles, to explore how objects, as things observed and perceived by subjects, achieve meaning - general and personal.
The precise and multi-layered, catchy and elaborate deliberate confusion of the exhibition oscillates between suggestion and transparency.