Portraits by Madlaina Peer

The paintings and drawings on display in this exhibition were conceived privately, almost in a secretive manner, between 1990 and 2021. The earlier works often show the children of friends, later on her own daughter, nieces, and a grandchild, all of whom have a special air of strangeness. The style of “portrait” is already slippery; maybe it is something in between realism, projection, and distortion, but it becomes even more difficult when the subjects are children: constantly growing and ever-changing, they stay alien to adults. Truly uncanny, they are simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar.