In her Brooklyn studio, German-Brazilian artist Janaina Tschäpe works in crescendos and pauses, building her lyrical abstract paintings that are redolent of memories, landscapes, remembered sounds, and evocative scents.

Just a few weeks ago, the artist put the final touches on a new group of paintings for “a sky filled with clouds and the smell of blood oranges” her fourth solo exhibition with Sean Kelly, now on view in New York (through October 19). In these new canvases, Tschäpe taps into her deepest artistic instincts, working from feeling and intuition to create pieces that range from intimate works on paper to symphonic multi-paneled paintings. Together these paintings create a poetic sense of call-and-response.

These works speak to Tschäpe’s rich internal world and her multifaceted passions, including the poetry of Mexican writer Octavio Paz, German philosophy and landscape painting, and the propulsive paintings of Swedish playwright August Strindberg. In her oil and oil stick canvases and smaller pastels and watercolors, these heady fascinations coalesce with sensory delights of the artist’s surroundings at the moment, the rain outside a window or an afternoon spent in the sun, creating tension between the immediate and the remembered, what’s known and what’s felt.

The exhibition at Sean Kelly also coincides with an extensive new monograph on the artist’s work, including an essay by art historian Joachim Pissarro, published by Hatje Cantz and Sean Kelly. “Tschäpe’s canvases serve as arenas wherein the visible intermingles with the visceral, inviting us to traverse conceptual depths through layers of paint and memory that subtly insinuate rather than explicitly reveal,” Pisarro writes in his essay.

Recently, we spoke to the artist at her studio in Bed-Stuy to discuss her newest works and recent rediscovery of pastels.

Inside Janaina Tschäpe’s Bed-Stuy studio, 2024. Courtesy of Janaina Tschäpe Studio.

Tell us about your studio.
My current studio is located in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. The neighborhood has seen significant changes over the years, much like the studio itself. It used to be a car garage. I initially made simple renovations: added some drywall and installed skylights. At that time, I was living in Williamsburg with my daughter, Mina, who was 3 1/2  years old, so it was crucial for me to maintain a separation between home and have fixed working hours.

In 2019, I undertook a major renovation, adding two stories to incorporate my living space into the studio. This integration of home and studio has given me the freedom to work at any time, whether late at night, or on weekends. I no longer have to confine myself to a strict schedule; I can immerse myself in my work whenever the painting demands more time. I particularly enjoy working on weekends when the studio is silent, allowing me to play loud music and immerse myself in the creative process without any distractions. The merging of my home and studio has been a significant change, offering a new level of flexibility and creative freedom.

Installation view of “Janaina Tschäpe: a sky filled with clouds and the smell of blood oranges” at Sean Kelly, New York. Photography: Jason Wyche, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles

What was it like working toward your exhibition “a sky filled with clouds and the smell of blood oranges” now on view at Sean Kelly? How does the title relate to these works specifically?

When working toward this exhibition, I didn’t follow a specific approach. My process was continuous—it wasn’t about creating work for this specific show but rather a constant flow of creativity. This contrasts with the exhibition I had at Sean Kelly in 2021, where I purposely made large, monumental works specifically designed to fit in the space in a precise way.

Last November, I started a painting that became the first piece of this exhibition, a large triptych titled Walking through fields (Passeando no tempo) (2023). This piece set the tone for the rest of the show, sparking a place for the other works to follow. The triptych is a work comprised of three individual canvases each talking to each other to create one cohesive work. I knew then I wanted to create an exhibition, where all the works spoke to each other in the context of the exhibition, creating a visual dialogue. I decided to trust my gut and to make an array of works of varying sizes and materials, allowing myself to move fluidly between them, creating connections between them, creating a language space that I carved out, a cohesive visual language.

Inside Janaina Tschäpe’s Bed-Stuy studio, 2024. Courtesy of Janaina Tschäpe Studio.

I just completed the last painting for the show a few weeks ago. The process was interesting because, even though I had felt I had done enough work, when I looked at them all, selected what I thought worked as a group, and I had an idea of what the installation would look like in the gallery, the works did not have the visual clarity I wanted. I knew I needed one more work. With the completion of wonderland (2024), I knew I now had all the elements I needed to make this visual poem I had envisioned. Now, with all the works determined, I could title exhibition. These works came from memories, fragments of observations of nature—like looking at the sky and remembering things, feeling the smell of things.

The exhibition press release mentions intimacy and the “emotional and poetic potential of art.” How does your internal landscape inform these works? 

My paintings are inner landscapes, which are observed, forgotten, brought to light again, filtered through dreams and distant recollections, composed of fragments, reduced to a few elements or supplemented by others, but always abstracted into lines, brush strokes, or surfaces. The painting space is for me a real space, a space linked to the moment and which I only invent in the moment of painting.

My painting is more visceral than literal. I feel deeply connected to the environment around me; there’s always a relationship to the location and the events happening there, like the smell of rain, the changing weather, or the colors in the sky. These experiences leave traces and fragments in my memory that I express through the painting. This connection with my surroundings drives the gestural and poetic elements of my work.