BERLIN.- Anna Borowy titled her this year‘s solo exhibition in janinebeangallery „Champagnerbad“ (Champagne bath), giving an ironic hint in advance which the random spectator might require facing Borowy‘s elysian show of blessed figures. Nevertheless her artworks don‘t need this headline for comprehension, since the overwhelming sensuality of the paintings finds grounding in the firm calm of the expression and balance of the protagonists. Their sphinx-like posture ban the spectator not only with a transfigured noli me tangere, but also they are genuine catalyzers for the viewer‘s pause to think.

Where the generell artistic consent falls regularly into line with the ugliness and hardship of society insofar as it mirrors these features as cathartic as possible, Anna Borowy seems to lever with the other end of the spectrum of human nature and its abysses. For her the instrument and object of unmasking a hypnotic beauty, smooth and adamant. Thus one can feel reminded of the streak of rage of the female luminous figure Galadriel in Tolkien‘s „Lord of the Rings“ about how she would reign with the ring: „Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Dawn! [...] All shall love me and despair!“ Preceding this tradition is the fate of the mythological character Hylas as a co-sailor of the Argonauts. His short tale as the beloved lad of Heracles ends with his abduction by a group of water nymphs, keeping him in their care. This way young Hylas is safe from the dangers of the cruise of the Argo, but he now imposedly dwells in the matriarchal sphere of the nymphs, who will hide him forever. It is these nymphs sharing features with the female figures in Anna Borowy‘s paintings, they appear innocent and are seductive and captivating at the same time.

So the beauty in Anna Borowy‘s paintings is noticeably ambivalent, being real and powerful as such, but also immanently abyssal in its consequences and backgrounds.