Katja Jacobs

The following review, in the fall 2007 issue of the Hudson Review, by New York-based art critic Karen Wilkin, of a previous exhibition by Katja Jacobs, could have also been written about this current exhibition. In it she writes that, “… the German-born, Toronto-based painter, Katja Jacobs showed a group of her powerful, near-monochrome palimpsest images. Jacobs, whose work I have admired and whose evolution I’ve followed for almost thirty years, treats her canvases as over-sized diaries, responsive “fields” on which she records her deepest obsessions, “writing” them in alphabets we cannot read but that nonetheless speak clearly to us. She creates walls of marks that drift in and against dense, creamy expanses, sometimes obscuring what she has “written” with overpainting or collaging, and sometimes re-excavating hidden “messages.” Like imperfectly retained memories, Jacobs’ configurations often seem to be on the verge of yielding up a precise meaning but dissolve into abstract lines, scrawls, and touches, the more closely we study them, without, curiously enough, losing any of their aura of alluding to something important. Sometimes, she pairs related works as diptychs, making us acutely aware of both likenesses and differences between them. They are some of the most haunting and visually arresting paintings I am aware of.

…But if we approach one of her paintings more closely, we are rewarded by discovering another order of events: fragile inflections of the surface, textures that bear witness to campaigns of collaging, a range of exquisitely modulated marks, and more. We become increasingly aware, too, of the complexity of color that enlivens these apparently black and white, graffiti-like images – surprising notes of almond green, flickers of red, silvery greys, and more. Over the years, Jacobs’ work has been seen in New York, and in many major European and Canadian cities, as well as regularly in Toronto, yet she remains less widely known than the potency of her work merits.