GALLI
wer bis drei zählen kann, kann gerettet werden

Galli, wer bis drei zählen kann, kann gerettet werden, exhibition view, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin. Photo: Def Image. copyright: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020
“Her deeply original morphology, transcending genre or style, are testaments to this antagonistic corporeal ethos: Galli’s bodies may be disfigured, mutated, disabled, but they all showcase an unmistakable lust and passion for life, for being and bodiliness in all its wondrous ambivalence.”
—Galli Absage ans Paradies by Jeppe Ugelvig, November 2021
This text was originally written for Galli’s exhibition at Brunand Brunand

Galli, wer bis drei zählen kann, kann gerettet werden, exhibition view, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin. Photo: Def Image. copyright: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020
Galli (b. 1944, lives in Berlin) established herself in the West Berlin art scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s, by depicting bodies in states of vulnerability, disfigurement and ecstatic joy. Her works explore the inexhaustible potential in depictions of corporeality. In 2020, her paintings and collages were on display at KW as part of the 11th Berlin Biennale, which acknowledged “the cracks in the system…those broken by it and their struggles”. Possessing a worldview different from that of an able-bodied person, Galli’s practice remains indispensable today, in a world based on the imperative of unlimited productivity, mobility, and availability, and in which any form of physical dysfunctionality leads to immediate exclusion or is declared in need of treatment. Its continued relevance also relates to the medium of painting itself, where we are currently witnessing an emphasis on historically marginalized subjectivities and their relationship to the broader social sphere, and where artists are ardently exploring the issues of bodily fragility, interdependence, and non-human life.
“Galli’s paintings offer ambivalent depictions of the human condition that stimulate the viewer’s imagination, refusing a binding definition in favor of an open interpretability. Her work abounds with allusions, art historical motifs and references, triggering a flood of associations, sensations and possibly conflicting thoughts in whoever encounters it.”
—Sebastjan Brank, November 2022
Exerpt from the press text for wer bis drei zählen kann, kann gerettet werden, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, 2022

Galli, wer bis drei zählen kann, kann gerettet werden, exhibition view, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin. Photo: Def Image. copyright: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020