pareidolia: Judith Grassl, Luis Zimmermann

Strangely Familiar Paradises

Delicate fabrics or translucent layers of paint drift across the canvas, like colored shadows of what once was. Distant memories or forgotten dreams slip all too easily from the grasp of the mind seeking clarity—seemingly within reach, yet impossible to hold. They dissolve the moment thought tries to outline them more precisely. Contours that were once sharp blur, the image loses its certainty. Other memories press in, overlapping, merging and separating at once. 

Sometimes all that remains in this mental twilight is a single color, a shape, a taste, or a 

feeling—something clear, solid, unmistakable. It insists on itself, lingers, and returns when least expected. Often, it is the smallest, most inconspicuous details that remain tangible in memory: the bite of an apple, the smell of saltwater, saffron yellow—remembrances that cast green, gray, and red shadows upon the image beneath.

Working with the principle of collage, Judith Grassl and Luis Zimmermann draw from their 

personal archives of material, extracting fragments from their original contexts and arranging them anew. Grassl uses art-historical references alongside cutouts from newspapers and  photographs. Zimmermann turns to a growing archive of family photographs and his own images. His motifs emerge from intimate surroundings, yet at times take on broader sociopolitical resonance—when, for instance, fragments of demonstrations flicker through.  Digital collages serve as the starting point for his textile prints, which he then cuts apart, reassembling the pieces on canvas. Grassl, on the other hand, transforms her collages and drawings into three-dimensional, showcase-like paper models, photographs them, and brings them back into painterly surfaces. Both artists deconstruct their material with scissors or scalpel, leaving at times only a silhouette or a structure behind.

In Zimmermann’s work, translucent textiles are laid layer upon layer. Within them, shadowy 

outlines of figures, objects, and landscapes can be made out. The fragments tell stories that both reveal themselves and slip away from the gaze. It is a quality that belongs to photography itself, which never truly depicts reality as it is. Beneath the gauze lies painting, still faintly visible, setting the tone for the image. The textiles rest upon the original motif like veils—obscuring it while also exposing it. As Clemens Rathe wrote in The Philosophy of the Surface (2020), the veil works as a medium between concealment and revelation: only through the veil does what lies beneath become compelling. Zimmermann’s works unfold in this way across painting, photography, and textile, inhabiting the spaces in between.

Grassl’s paintings are also multiperspectival, yet they remain firmly within their medium. 

Drawing from painting traditions, she restages altarpieces, simultaneous scenes, and still lifes, giving them new, contemporary readings. Objects heavy with symbolism—an apple, a white lily, a lance wound—are placed into new contexts of meaning. Textures redefine them, stripping away their original, indexical weight. 

Sometimes they appear like cut-out shapes, their digital aesthetic recalling image-editing 

software. It is as if painting itself shifts through different states—at times edged with sharp 

contours, then dissolving into vibrating gradients, merging with the surrounding space. Her own works may even serve as references, reappearing as quoted fragments within her stage-like image spaces. 

Both artists work from painting: Grassl layering with acrylic, Zimmermann allowing painted 

elements to glimmer beneath the surface. The illusionistic spaces they create resist 

conventional spatial logic. Grassl’s works sometimes expand beyond their edges into the 

exhibition space, budding across white walls, blooming into new images. Zimmermann’s textile overlays lend his canvases a similar three-dimensionality. Drawing from a set of media as if from a type case, their works seem freed from place and time. From figurative beginnings, Zimmermann’s practice drifts increasingly toward abstraction, while Grassl’s, too, hovers between figuration and abstraction. Their images remain ambiguous, reflecting a reality that grows ever more fragmented. Within them, different truths are allowed to coexist. They are both question and answer: How can the unimaginable be shown? How can the invisible—memory, dream, inner life, or faith—be made visible, made almost touchable to the eye? 

- Julia Stellmann