INVITATION
ASCENDIA|06 SEPTEMBER| 5-8 PM
GALERIE SLP CO:BIKINI BERLIN OG.1
RSVP

Ascendia” is an exhibition that articulates the collective rise, transformation, and visionary potential of humanity through the diverse but resonant practices of Justine Otto and Giuseppe Gonella. The title, derived from “ascend” to rise, move upward, or achieve a higher state serves as a powerful metaphor for transcending boundaries both personal and universal. “Ascendia” encapsulates the journey of art and the human spirit striving for elevation, meaning, and unity.
 
Justine Otto’s recent work, the “Crowd Series,” marks a dynamic evolution in her practice. Departing from her earlier focus on solitary figures and intimate groups, this new body of work stages densely packed scenes, capturing the energy, complexity, and ambiguity of communal existence. Otto orchestrates her crowds in shifting constellations, bodies overlap, blur, and sometimes dissolve into painterly abstraction, while faces alternate between anonymity and intense psychological presence. Through the “Crowd Series,” Otto probes the tensions between individuality and collectivity: how identities merge, clash, or momentarily surface within the larger mass. Her vivid, luminous palette combined with sweeping brushwork conveys the pulse of shared experience, the flow of emotion that animates and unsettles modern public life. These paintings serve both as social commentaries and psychological studies, reflecting on how the self is shaped, challenged, or affirmed amid the pressing force of the crowd.
 
In parallel, Giuseppe Gonella’s work navigates landscapes painted with the hues of memory, ritual, and mythic allegory. His densely worked compositions dissolve and reconfigure figures within surreal, almost dreamlike environments. 
Gonella’s art acts as a visual metaphor for the fluid nature of consciousness, where past and present collide, histories recede and reemerge, and collective longing is encoded in texture and color. These works illuminate the process of transformation on a broader scale, representing human striving toward liberation, evolution, and transcendence.
 
Together, Otto and Gonella form a dynamic dialogue in “Ascendia.” Their art charts individual and collective ascents, whether through the intimate terrain of personal growth or the expansive vistas of shared human experience.

Galerie SLP 

Budapester Str. 48, 10787 Berlin, Germany