Alma Feldhandler’s (*1996, based in Paris) paintings are filled with wounded creatures, tattered existences and anxious forms that seem to be waiting in the corridors of time. Her compositions are fed by century-old photographs ranging from archives of the Jewish diaspora to Victorian London and sanatorium literature such as the writings of Bruno Schulz and Max Blecher. At first glance, Feldhandler’s very small to large-format paintings appear almost neo-expressionist. The painter uses bright …
Alma Feldhandler’s (*1996, based in Paris) paintings are filled with wounded creatures, tattered existences and anxious forms that seem to be waiting in the corridors of time. Her compositions are fed by century-old photographs ranging from archives of the Jewish diaspora to Victorian London and sanatorium literature such as the writings of Bruno Schulz and Max Blecher.
At first glance, Feldhandler’s very small to large-format paintings appear almost neo-expressionist. The painter uses bright colours, applying them to the canvas in very thin layers, so that her figures always seem to be just materialising out of a distinct mist of colour. As if you were dreaming or remembering – fragile states in limbo that can quickly evaporate again.
Although the people in her pictures seem to come from a different time, they appear approachable, familiar, as if you had just met them on the street and spoken to them. Feldhandler’s pictures are like traces of shared experiences, close and yet distant. Just as the canvas absorbs the colour, her pictures exert a suction effect on the viewer.
The figures in Feldhandler’s paintings often wear neat clothes that look as if they have been carefully treated and maybe passed on for generations. In the paintings she created for the exhibition Who’s the Captain of All These Boys of Death?, which was on view at Meyer Riegger, Berlin in spring 2024, Feldhandler was not only inspired by the paintings and drawings of the Jewish Museum’s collection, but also by photographs from the archive that were taken in Berlin’s fashion houses during the Weimar Republic. The clothes someone wears mould the body, and vice versa, the body moulds the clothes. As a kind of protective armour and always conditioned by social conventions and circumstances, clothing bears witness to a time in a person’s life and expresses a particular, unmistakable way of being. Memories of generations are stored in the material of these coats, shoes and trousers – just like in Feldhandler’s canvases.