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……… About pictures that are pure painting and only pure painting, pouring out full of blooming sensuality of color and avoiding gray cloudiness and all kinds of mere variegation or the repetition of the same colors. The work of this thoroughbred painter takes place in brushstrokes, strokes and gestures, in color tones, contrasts, chords, spatial rhythms and moving dynamics! ……
…… Joanna Gleich's painting is an event that appears to be cast in one piece. And this despite the fact that it, separated, pre-stirred and mixed, reaches the primed canvas from dozens of individual porcelain bowls. The artist in an interview: “It's not about exhausting the spectrum. It has to harmonize.” A brief excerpt from the same interview describes the colourist's subtle practice. Each color has its own viewing angle. "Because each shape has a different light falling on the surface, the color must also be different, and this perspective must be exaggerated." . You have to be able to walk around in the pictures in order to lose yourself in them. “The short passages touch the core of Gleich's painting, the inexhaustible wealth of her colorful means and the pull that emanates from her pictures. It is fed not only from the – sometimes imperceptible – tracks of colored light, but no less from a brush stroke of powerful, flexible width. Since the act of painting is mainly performed while standing, from above onto the floor, the format becomes a dance floor for a choreography that is as expressive as it is constructively solid, and occasionally also lyrically lively. Gottfried Knapp also rightly emphasizes that the individual consistency of each brushstroke comes to the fore. Each one is an action and evokes a counter-reaction. An inner compass of the artist, without weakening the polarities, aims at coordination, balance and greater mutual effectiveness. In such an increase, the diverse orientation condenses into a complex composition....
Manfred Schneckenburger
