top of page
Search

Artist Jule Korneffel

Updated: Jan 16





Jule Korneffel (b. Germany) graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2008 as a Meisterschülerin under Tal R. Since 2015, she has been based in New York City, where she received her M.F.A. from Hunter College in 2018. Shortly after, Korneffel gained recognition for her emotionally resonant yet reductive approach to painting.


Exhibition highlights include Phase Patterns at ltd los angeles, here comes trouble at Spencer Brownstone Gallery (NYC), Mini Me Mary—in dialogue with Mary Heilmann—at Albada Jelgersma Gallery (Amsterdam), and All That Kale at Claas Reiss Gallery (London). In October 2021, her work was featured on Platform Art (backed by David Zwirner), followed in 2022 by two solo exhibitions: Snippets from the Met at Albada Jelgersma and Here comes the night at Spencer Brownstone. Her work was again selected by Platform Art for its Anniversary Capsule.


Most recently, Korneffel’s work was included in the group exhibition Breath at M. David Gallery, curated by John Yau, alongside works by Suzan Frecon, Harriet Korman, and Peter Shear. Korneffel’s work and exhibitions have been reviewed twice by John Yau in Hyperallergic: first in “Color Is the Carrier of Emotion” (2019), and later in “The Pleasures of Slow Looking” (2022). Additional press and writing include “The Ongoing Present Moment of Making: Jule Korneffel”, an interview by Hannah Bruckmüller in BOMB Magazine (2021); an essay by Terry R. Myers written on the occasion of her show at Claas Reiss (2021); “Jule Korneffel: Here Comes the Night” by Andrew L. Shea, featured in Artseen in The Brooklyn Rail (2022); and Platform Art Spotlight: “In the Studio: Jule Korneffel. The artist on the alchemy of color and calling two places home” (2022).



"I think of painting as an internal landscape through which I explore and filter emotional states. The conceived picture plane is a lived experience that evolves through layers of paint. Following an abstract style of inscriptive mark making, I operate with a very limited set of tools and a repetitive process of adding and (over-)layering marks. I mainly create panels, sometimes I paint directly on the wall. My focus is the nature and application of color, for which I am constantly developing my own technique. The multiple layering and matt surfaces stem from my European academic upbringing and are particularly inspired by Italian Renaissance painters, such as Sandro Botticelli, Titian, Giovanni Bellini, and the frescos of Fra Angelico, while the intuitive and open-layered approach relates to American art—particularly to artists whose works draw from internal dialogue: Mary Heilmann, Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko and Cy Twombly. My tonality is shaped by nature’s palette which often aligns with the pre-digital color schemes found in Renaissance and Impressionist painting. Over time, I have been studying Monet’s Water Lilies series, fascinated by his translation of water, and atmosphere into color. —Water is a floating plane and so are my surfaces too. Despite the reductive process of filtering, I maintain a minimalist sensibility. Each mark is imbued with personal history. The structure and transparency of layers offer an open-ended sensual encounter: underpaintings remain visible, brushstrokes come forward, and the marks migrate. At best, the artwork becomes a self-sufficient form, inhabitable experientially as a living space. My paintings are complex organisms with poetic simplicity. Following a highly personal concept, I distill the image from many sources until it enters into one composition (alike a formula). This process engages the entire panel. I use the sides for color tests and coincidental spatters, the backs to note and cross out titles until one emerges that matches to the simultaneously evolving painting. My work bridges European tradition and American art, combining Old Masters’ techniques with transmitted alchemical wisdom and universal theories drawn from philosophy, mathematics, and astrophysics. Interwoven with autobiographical memory and everyday experience, painting becomes a seismographic motion—both a vehicle and a navigator. I like art to be a liberated space. I seek quiet joy, an ambient character of my paintings offering self-connection. Painting as a surrogate for living to myself and others."




Tell us a little about yourself (where you are from) and your background in the arts.

I am from Germany, and have been based in New York City since 2015 when I began the M.F.A. program at Hunter College. I originally planned to stay for just one semester, but once I set foot here, everything changed. After a drawing class at Hunter, where I was introduced to the American term mark-making—a concept that doesn’t exist in German—everything shifted, and my entire identity as a painter came together.


Before Hunter, I received a traditional art education at the Dresden University of Fine Arts and later studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf with Tal R.


New York City feels like home now, as well as the middle of nowhere in Germany where I’m from still feels like home too. That duality is reflected in my work—somewhere between European painting tradition and American abstraction, especially in the tension between external observation and internal dialogue.


What kind of work are you currently making?

The current body of paintings, I’m working on, is an investigation into how color can hold light and memory — I am interested to create tones that seem to glow softly from within.


I work with my method of layering color and marks in a respective and at the same time experimental order. A painting typically gains up to 20-40 layers. I use acrylic medium and natural pigments. The technique continues to evolve.


In this new body of work, I aim for results where the light feels encapsulated—neither streaming outward, like my earlier bright, saturated hues, nor drawing the viewer inward like my more recent darker tones. These new colors inherit a quiet radiance, holding space rather than demanding attention. They invite the viewer in through their presence.


My interest is about moments that hold the potential for renewal—where memory and time flow as living currents. You can observe it in the first morning light, when darkness softens and gives way to light. The light touches everything with a gentle glow — a moment of awakening, an arising of color and memory. Even those fading or long-lost begin to stir again. A pause, a potential, inviting reflection on what was, what is, and would can be. A deep conversation, that never stands still, such as water playing beneath the surface. —


Images of the new work aren’t released yet.


What is a day like in the studio for you?

Since I am currently in a studio transition, daily routines are shifting as well. Through this unusual situation, I’ve learned—more than anything—that my studio is wherever I am, and that I am never truly separated from it. Painting has been the first and last thing on my mind every day since I was little. It is my vehicle through life—so much more than mere color on a ground.


Ideally, I get up early—preferably even before dawn—and read and write (with a cup of coffee in my pajamas) before moving over to the studio to paint until sunset. I can’t look at my colors under electric light, so my practice is bound to the natural. On darker days, I often skip the morning routine and go straight to painting. Sometimes I continue into the night with only a small, soft lamp—which works for a while, because I tend to feel the colors more than I look at them anyway.


My painting practice alternates between observation and execution. I spend a lot of time looking at my paintings, observing how the colors shift with the changing daylight.


I study the Old Masters, and aim to translate their tonalities into my approach to layering color and mark-making. I spend endless hours experimenting with color—testing directly on canvases, and also on paper. I keep a notebook, a color diary, about my color investigation. My practice follows a loose structure that allows for intuition and spontaneity—for following the flow. The studio is a chaotic laboratory, and typically a mess by the end of each day. I love this kind of freedom. — and I know fit has been a productive day, when I go home totally exhausted and not knowing nothings.


What are you looking at right now and/or reading?

I spent a lot of the summer reading Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. My interest was sparked when I learned that Proust created a character inspired by Claude Monet.
 Last winter, I was finally able to return to Monet’s monumental water lily installation at the Musée de l’Orangerie. His water lily series has been crucial to my own work—a fluid surface without horizon, rendered in a natural color spectrum. Since both Proust and Monet were contemporaries, I’ve become increasingly drawn to their time period—the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


Lately, I’ve been reading more literature and philosophy, and studying artists from that era to broaden my perspective and deepen my understanding. Nevertheless, the contemporary scene—especially the New York City art world—never stops fascinating me.


I go out often to see exhibitions. Recently, I’ve been captivated by John Zurier’s show at Peter Blum, Cora Cohen’s late work at Greene Naftali, Harriet Korman at Thomas Erben, Norman Zammitt at Karma, and the documentary exhibition on the making of Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels at Sprüth Magers. Andrew L. Shea’s debut at JJ Murphy is beautiful, too. I only wish I could have seen Suzan Frecon’s works at David Zwirner in Paris this fall.


Where can we find more of your work? (ex. website/insta/gallery/upcoming shows)









Comments

bottom of page