Jana Cordenier grasps and documents the momentary, experiencing her surroundings in an intimate way - being immersed in them. The gentle play of her ephemeral strokes and marks is a result of Cordenier’s collaboration with nature. The artist creates her unique landscapes by spreading out the canvas on the pebbly surface of the ground and highlighting the outlines left by the plants and stones underneath. Her delicate, luminous works illustrate a moment caught in time. (Karina Abdusalamova)
2019
Jana Cordenier walks slowly through nature. Her walk is intimate and fluid. Just so she touches the canvas gently, drawing nature and then sewing it. Colours appear light in her paintings, light in mass and experience. Sewing is like breathing. It gives rhythm and momentum to the body that is focused on growing colours in an infinite field. The needle enters the canvas, the yarn probes the skin. Threads grow from the inside to the outside and back again. They connect colours in space. The layered skin bursts of life, allowing the colours to behave as branches in the wind. These works operate in a field that we can reach out for but not grasp. As we look at them, we coincide with the canvas, feeling the wind on our skin, and our senses intertwine with the surroundings where they originated. Alive in the same air, we touch an unknown moment, realizing that there is nothing but what we feel.
2019 Observing nature is not only about seeing your surroundings but also about experiencing them, or being immersed in them. You feel the wind and the sun, smell the rosemary and thyme, hear the cicadas, you can touch the leaves and flowers. Some leaves appear very close, others at a distance. Everything around you is moving, and so is the moment. Works become part of that observation when the prepared cotton is put directly on the ground. The surface stays wobbly and uncontrolled because of the plants and stones underneath it. When the canvas is stretched, spots appear and lines are continuing unexpectedly. These works stem from an attempt to make paintings lighter, or less heavy on matter. Before, I considered oil paint too explicit and too meaningful. Here, in nature, to paint is to perform a natural act. It's a direct way of expression without any questions. The struggle here is not about the medium, but it's in the painting itself.