Jana Euler

Oil on canvas
70 7/8 x 55 1/8 inches (180 x 140 cm)

I’d identify Euler’s [irony] as critical or constructive. It is meant to articulate something, to reveal a structure.
—Fabrice Stroun

Born in Friedberg, Germany in 1982, Jana Euler studied art at the Städelschule Frankfurt am Main and the Glasgow School of Art. Over the past decade, Euler has refined a practice spanning an eclectic range of stylistic approaches to investigate the possibilities of a work’s dissemination, consumption, and reception, as exemplified by recent exhibitions at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017) and Artists Space, New York (2020). Deliberately evasive, her often humorous approach to figuration leaves space for an array of interpretive possibilities.

First presented in 2013 at Galerie Neu in Berlin, Dirty Gossip Rain is one of several works in Euler’s series that feature amorphous visages “dripping” down and filling the entire canvas. These paintings playfully address the role of informal conversation in art criticism and the slippery line between private and public social spheres. Here, Euler posits gossip as the “social glue” fueling and holding these structures together, a process as common and necessary as precipitation in the weather cycle.