In Jula Lynn’s minimalist paintings, the surface acts as the starting point from which she shapes both geometric and organic forms into a visual language that wavers between abstraction and tangible representation. Her editing strategy focuses on combining paint with sculptural elements, using various techniques and materials, such as acrylic paint, ink, surfacer, glue, and sewing, to create multilayered dimensions where the composition is centred on the essential. Consequently, the work draws attention to deliberately added details, like sewn lines and cracks, while the gestural cutting of holes accentuates both negative space and physical depth.
The principle of the artwork allows sentiment to take priority over shapes that need to be categorised, a concept reinforced through her serial approach. Though individual composed, the works begin to resonate with one another, bound by a visual syntax that speaks in gesture, form, and rhythm. Through themes of transience, loss, and human behaviour, she examines their interwoven nature in search of a foundation. A transparency of multifaceted layers opens a space where viscerality is not only present, but elevated as a defining motif in her artistic practice.
Jula Lynn Kniesel was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1994. She received her bachelor’s degree in Textile Design, focusing on an artistic approach, from the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences’ Faculty of Design in 2018. Since then, she has been working in the studio of the painter Sabine Jesse-Kniesel at Dosenfabrik in Hamburg, with group exhibitions in Spain, Hamburg, and Berlin following.