Europabad
The palm tree is a pathos formula for desire; as a potted plant, photo wallpaper or promenade decoration in buckets by the wayside. It holds out the promise of a freedom which, as a domesticated useful plant in banana plantations, it does not have any more than the tourist in fenced-in hotel complexes, SUVs in wild areas – or here: in a glass box on the Smokers‘ Area on the ferry „Norröna“ between the Faroe Islands and Iceland.
The deco-palms exposed to wind and salt water, sunlight and smoke are made of plastic. With their flaky plastic surfaces, colour irritations and faded stains, the relentless weathering gives them back a kind of naturalness. Or is this effect a calculated one? Did the manufacturer intentionally use the cut-off leaves to simulate the typical traces of indoor plant care?
Romy Julia Kroppe’s paintings are collections of dishevelled hybrid objects between furnished landscape and plants as interiors. The people themselves are not visible in her paintings, but what they do or don’t do, what they have lost or allowed to happen, is omnipresent. The stair tiles at the foot of a rock in the Elbsandsteingebirge, plastic waste on the beach of an Atlantic island, fish ladders in crevices in the rocks or tiny depictions of wilderness on traffic islands make visible transitions between nature and culture, subjugation and weathering.
By subjecting both her motifs and her working material to an excessive occupation, Romy Julia Kroppe’s pictures are condensed into emblematic scenes: interference, enactment and decay. In addition to painting, Kroppe incorporates other procedures into her working method. In her series „Strand“, she uses acrylic transfer to apply sections of her photo archive to the picture surface for further processing. In this way, the focused gaze as a way of seeing is not only subjected to further reflection, but is continued in painting by means of contingency, manipulation and material aesthetics.
Names of nostalgia such as „Europabad“ tell of health resorts and adventure pools, wellness salt caves and health-promoting spring waters. On the linguistic level, they also mark the thresholds at which different states merge into one another
Marcel Raabe, 2020
