Eröffnung: Samstag, 25. Januar 2025, 16–20 Uhr

Reflections on my exhibition flaming loneliness at Jahn und Jahn, Lisboa 2025

A selection of works which have been gathered to be presented as an exhibition at Jahn und Jahn Lisboa, is foremost a great pleasure.
When the title took shape which happened before the choice of paintings and drawings was made, I sensed that a central aspect of my work was about to be brought to a point.
It can be felt as a contradictory juxtaposition of seriousness and mockery, of sincerity and self-loathing, of tragedy and charade.
It is present in the titles of works like bound to fall which sounds like a curse onto one’s own ventures. Or there is swedish hag 1899 which can be read as abusive towards old age. And cosmic munchies which holds an affirmative attitude towards the horrors of existence, signified by a decaying skull continuously and automatically eating up stardust.
Paintings like Archäologie which shows two individuals toasting drinks in a cave underneath a meadow and trees, or Dirección Nacional de Migraciones Buenos Aires 2009 which is about the Argentinian office of immigration that welcomed and registered German mass murderer Adolf Eichmann as an immigrant under the name of Ricardo Clement, in 1950. At this office, a historian named Uki Goni found a mother cat nursing her kittens, the animal family of them lying amongst the shelves and boxes filled with files.
And there is the title of the exhibition itself: flaming loneliness, combined with an image of the painting Zeitlinse which has been photographed on the easel where it also had been created. The painting shows an imagination of a burning town, probably after medieval times, but amidst the continuous reoccurrence of the plague. Associating historical and present catastrophes or tragedies with one’s own psychological dilemmas is not necessarily pathological. It also holds a potential for empathy. However, it does partially consist of a self-centred approach towards events impacting general humankind in past, present, and future.
Almost ten years ago, in the summer of 2016, while staying with a friend in Bavaria, I had a number of quite intense conversations with a man who had fled from Somalia, some years before, after which he had ended up in southern Germany. He had wandered through desert and war zones, and had been attacked and even shot multiple times. And he had crossed the Mediterranean in a boat as underequipped and overcrowded, as we have seen on many images in the media, if we did not choose to loo away. After telling many of his stories, Abdullah insistingly inquired about what it would be like to live and work as an artist, eventually returning to his initial impression of the world of art as being "Crazy World". He would pass by me on his way out to go to work, see me draw or paint, and comment, if I was back in Crazy World again.
Ever since the encounter with Abdullah, I try to imagine what his reactions would be when presented with the pictures I have painted and drawn. And it helps me to look for irony and humour to mediate between hard truths of my fellow human beings wherever they may be, and my own, personal tragedies, to still be able to acknowledge what life had and will have in store for me.

Lutz Braun, January 2025