Julia Krupenia (Winter) - NL/RU
(1965)  in Moscow, Russia.

Lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
I lived about twelve years in Workuta (North Pole). This period inspired me to take on the artist name of Julia Winter. Moving to Moscow and later my emigration to The Netherlands all have been feeding a consciousness of distraction, changing identities and growing knowledge about social and political differences.
The juxtaposition of different worlds is a recurrent theme in my works. I use opposites like male female, past-present or guilt-innocence and transmute them into a poetic or sometimes in a more political reality. In my work I constantly use meaningful layers that are placed over and upon each other.
Double portraits
Julia Winter explores the phenomenon of the portrait and, more specifically, how we perceive the other. In her portraits she uses photographic images or images of older paintings. They are often 'double portraits' in which the first transparent image is mounted on glass or Plexiglas whilst the second portrait is affixed to the underlying surface of the frame. This means that we look through the first layer at the second one and thus end up seeing and recognising a mash of two portraits. Walking from one end of the picture to the other, the two layers differ slightly depending on the angle from which we look at the underlying image. What’s more, the reflection in the glass may well add our own reflection to the mix. Suddenly we seem to participate in the portrait and it challenges us to look more closely.  

In Julia Winter’s double portraits the two personalities blend together, even if they come from totally different worlds. For example, in Young Lust, the face and upper part of the body of a young boy in a t-shirt covers an image of a seventeenth-century lady in a black gown. They differ in gender, time of origin, The boy looks quite self-conscious whilst the woman is decorous. She represents a social class that can commission a portrait. It is clear that the two images come from two completely different worlds. By presenting the two worlds in a single composite portrait the otherness is emphasised and raises questions about how we judge the other. It results in a hybrid picture that emerges from bringing together disparate elements. At a time when emigration has become a common phenomenon, we have to accept an ongoing negotiation and exchange between irreconcilable differences. In the media, we see a huge number of different faces and in our cities we experience new national and ethnic mixtures. By juxtaposing two identities, Winter composes two overlapping images of faces which is at the same time a play of forms, colours and perspectives.

Undercover
Julia Winter paints men walking or standing wearing suits or she depicts parts of their clothes. It shows how important for a group of men the suit is as a symbol of power or prestige and even as a tool to display a certain kind of sexy attractiveness. It seems to be the outfit for the perfect servant of a system or organisation and it is a perfect way of concealing ones identity.

The type of man who is extremely hiding his own identity is the undercover. The undercover is the spy or the infiltrator who is employed by a system to collect data and transmit them. In our digitalized society we know how we are controlled by powers that infiltrate in our private life in order to control any kind of possible opposition or competition.

Artnewspaper
Julia Winter collected 194 newspapers from all over the world which she covered with objects, images or paint. The title is (Dis)connected. It was chosen because it suggests that we (the readers of newspapers or other media) are connected in the here and now, but we are disconnected because we misunderstand each other’s mind-set. She began to manipulate the original information. In some cases she painted over columns or photographic images. In these instances the black or the coloured rectangles were like abstract elements that covered the text or image. The limited information provided by the artist compels the viewer to bring his or her own imagination to match the images. By orchestrating the information the viewer becomes aware of the powers of manipulation. Covering parts of newspapers in black and white was a common phenomenon in Russia whenever the censor tried to protect the readers from inappropriate views and ideas.By using black rectangles the page becomes an abstract composition. They remind us of the floating squares and rectangular forms in Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist paintings. These works from The Washington Post not only refer to censorship but also to the aesthetics of abstract art.

Morphine Ampoules
The use of light and its reflections is exploited in a series of works incorporating morphine ampoules. Julia Winter presented these two- and three-dimensional works at the Museum van Bommel van Dam in 2012 .The cold glass of the ampoules gives off a shiny, crystal brightness enhanced by lamps. The ampoules are used to cover objects, and to alienate them from their usual or emotional sphere. Used in an installation they raise questions given that morphine has multiple connotations. Morphine not only helps to suppress anxiety of death or of physical and psychological pain, it also serves as a mind-altering escape from reality. In a wider context this installation refers to the often neglected aspects of modern society such as alienation, loneliness and addiction. The ampoules are used as material that may conceal an objects’ history by covering a portrait  or the tiny shoes of a child. They can also conceal time by covering an electric clock . The chilly set, evoked by the absence of people, not only articulates grand themes like mortality, but in the absence of people, the installation evokes a death-in-life air. The questions this raises are far from being cynical and defeatist, in fact, the installation seems to evoke notions of hope, recovery and enlightenment.

Assemblage
In the dialogue and the reworking of existing images and objects Julia Winter creates works of poetry in which past and present, male and female, power versus non-power play a role. By showing the cross-overs she visualizes how, in historical and cultural terms, these images are subject to change. Capturing the past by personal reconstruction is a recurring element in her work.

Yet, apart from the content, the context and the political messages, her work also reflects enormous freedom and pleasure in working with materials and objects. By the subtle juxtaposing and compilation of these materials and objects, Winter creates intriguing and persuasive visions. She is a master of compilation, reminiscent of a couturier who combines different kinds of fabric. She uses colour and materials in a way that ties opposites together. She enchants, excites, and by mixing seemingly discordant elements, she creates new and mysterious worlds.

Paintings
I use the paint in a loose way. It looks like an at random kind of dripping. Most of the time the result is also surprising to me. But in fact I have quite some control in the way I use transparent or mere opaque layers. I like to make these new layers that have nothing to do with the background of canvas. In a way, they are the same as three-dimensional portraits: two different levels of my memory room. Only the disordering or the destruction can lead to something new. We have to face that existing realities in a constant flux. All the so called perfect images of men that are multiplied in the media are just a myth. We need to accept that there is a multi-layered reality that has to be interpreted over and over again.

Website designed by M.R. Fridael (Martin@Fridael.nl)