JULIA ROMMEL: "Burnt Toast"

JULIA ROMMEL

"Burnt Toast"

14.08.-13.09.2025 / PREVIEW: THURSDAY 14.08.2025 17:00-20:00

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In the 1990s rom-com-dram classic 'Sliding Doors', Gwenyth Paltrow's diverging life paths are visually represented through the use of opposing colors, one path blonde and the other brunette. Surely it is an oversimplified cinematic tool to keep track of the parallel story lines developing. Or a grand conceived theory into how minor inconveniences and disruptions throughout the day alter the path to color choice.

One is walking

one is standing

who is more entitled

to the path

Josef Albers, 'Poems and Drawings'

In Julia Rommel's 'Calendar Year' and 'Milestones & Dial Tones' each of the four panels comprising these two distinct diptychs started off in the same place. The motivations behind the initial sizing, ground preparation, and the first intervention, are all spurred from the same beginning. Consequently, it is with these paintings, specifically the variations and adjustments, where we can best see Rommel's quest to explore minimal color relationships. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood". An analogous choice was made, yellow and cream peacefully harmonizing together. And a complementary choice was made, blue dynamically opposing orange. These large swaths of color dominating the works also show Rommel's self-directed question, can less composition do more work? Less reliance on demarcating pictorial space and complicated architecture turns the attention to the devil, the details. Exposed staples stripped horizontally with forest greens and happy accidents left splattered on the surfaces. A left path and a right path, neither inherently right nor wrong, but one simply laid out before us showing starkly different outcomes. For the sake of this exhibition, we do not have to choose which one to take.

To varying degrees of realization and acknowledgment, we are constantly influenced by the natural and social environments around us. While life spirals in a chaos of adult responsibilities and piling tasks, the world is vibrating in constant despair and upheaval. There are so few aspects that feel within exclusive control. For Rommel the uptick of tumult has led to a focus in the studio. An almost odd sense of calm has taken over to the color palette, lavenders, pale blues, baby pink. Punctuated by the potential existential crisis of a black monochrome entitled 'Hard Copy' that may or may not contain all the colors of world at the same time. Then back to the cumulonimbus clouds of sweeping gestures ushering in a meditative state. A gesture that has been a stalwart underpainting and routinely shows itself on the surface now.

As Rommel's practice ebbs and flows, so does her appreciation for results that previously would have felt too chaotic. With a strong foundation and independent agency there is a noticeable change in attitude and more confidence to let in her version of lawlessness. Instead of second-guessing choices, she moves forward with decision. An almost welcoming of new uncertainty and a living through the answers within a controllable space. Sometimes you drop an egg on the floor, or you burn your breakfast toast. You can decide if it ruins your whole day, or you shrug and make a new toast or switch to yogurt. Or if the 'Burnt Toast Theory', the aforementioned movie, and the coincidental title to this exhibition hold, it alters our day in unknowable ways. Who's to say where life would have taken Gwenyth as a redhead.

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For further information please visit our webpage: www.standardoslo.no or contact Mary Grace Wright at gracie@standardoslo.no or +47 41 27 95 10 / +47 22 60 13 10. STANDARD (OSLO) is open Wednesday-Friday: 12.00-17.00/ Saturday: 12.00-16.00. Sunday and Monday: Closed. Tuesday: Open by appointment.