Galerie 3AP

Sophie Esslinger: »Jalousie«

28.03.-19.04.2026

With »Jalousie«, Galerie 3AP presents a solo show by Sophie Esslinger at Wohnung Lauxtermann curated by Svenja Katharina Frisch. The Austrian painter’s pictorial spaces are defined by contrasts that do not present themselves as fixed dichotomies, but remain in a state of continual shift: inside and outside, above and below, body and cosmos. Inspired by the Romantic idea of the inner landscape, her works are less depictions of the external world than condensations of a subjective realm of experience, where perception and projection are inseparably intertwined. In this context, the image becomes a space in which inner and outer realities do not stand opposed, but mutually permeate one another. Drawing remains present in Esslinger’s painting as an immediate form of articulation. Lines, marks, and recurring motifs traverse the canvas, structuring her work as open pictorial spaces between abstraction and figuration. Perception, memory, and imagination overlap without resolving into a single, definitive reading. Instead, the works develop their own associative logic, in which forms emerge, shift, and recede. Recurring elements such as droplet shapes or fragmented, curtain- and blind-like structures: function not as fixed symbols, but as fluid signs. They evoke a mode of seeing that simultaneously frames, conceals, and reveals. The “blind” is less a motif than an operational structure: an ordering of partial visibility that organizes perception while also limiting it. Here, painting appears as a process in which thought is not represented, but comes into being at the very moment of its articulation.