About the Artist
Julia Rommel was born in 1980 in Salisbury, Maryland. She received her BS from the University of Richmond and her MFA from American University in Washington D.C. Solo Exhibitions include "The Little Match Stick", Bureau, NY; "Girl with Silver Rings", Sorry We're Closed, Brussels; "Mother Superior", Gaudel de Stampa, Paris; and "Delaware", Bureau, NY. Selected group exhibitions include "Where Were You", Lisson Gallery, London; "Correspondences: Ad Reinhardt at 100", Temp Art Space, NY; "Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out", White Flag Projects, St Louis; and "Freak Out", Greene Naftali, NY. In addition to her painting, Rommel has written about art for The Brooklyn Rail and The Highlights magazine.
Rommel's paintings, drawings and prints expose the procedures, tools, and materials by which they were made. The works are often intensely wrought through a process of layering and erasure that she likens to a fight: “I’ve found myself taking elaborate steps to keep my own signature away. I still remain perplexed at my constant refusal of my own gesture, why I find it so excessive- yes it is personal, but the personal is what I am at such pains to bring out of these things, layer after layer.” Her finished compositions are structured as nesting planes, some defined by subtle variations in color, others by differences in facture and texture, but always by a discernible personality: an endpoint at which the details of the process relate a humility and humanity to the viewer.
