The works of the artist Judas Companion deal with metamorphosis and multiple personalities. Through her masks, her paintings, photos and performances she visualises processes of transformation and turns her inner self, her emotional turmoil, outside. It is her aim to make the fragility, the vulnerability of a person and the imperfect visible.

With the help of handknitted mohair masks, which she adorns with eyes, mouths and noses mostly made out of clay, she can be someone else or actually anything she likes to be. This way she feels invincible and protected. She often creates big mouths with long tongues, misshaped noses, weird eyes that have a rather rough and raw appearance. Spooky, crazy, distorted, funny or even melancholic grotesque faces gaze at us from these masks. But one can always find a part of the artist in them. When wearing the masks and performing with them on, she is visible and invisible at the same time, which is accelerated by the loosely knitted mohair. Her Alter

Ego Judas Companion, initially invented by the artist (whose real name is Jasmin Reif) to protect her from the world outside, now serves her to depict her inner conflict.

The artist Monty Richthofen (also known as Maison Hefner) works with text and scripture. Slogans, thoughts, comments, observations, snapshots or self-reflections – everything is at first jotted down on little paper sheets. Sometimes it is only a short essence, at times a longer sentence and then again only one word or two. They provoke, are poignant, rough, melancholic, funny, self-ironic or just contemplative. While they are being written, it is not yet clear where they will end up, whether on human skin as a tattoo, on a canvas, in a public space, on the Internet, framed or sprayed.

As a youngster he started with graffiti, establishing through time his own, distinctive signature. This way he learned to read the traces that others leave behind and to develop a good eye in this regard. The big colourful paintings in the exhibition from the series TROJANS are reminiscent of this period. Here, he sprays personal thoughts or experiences on to a coloured canvas and sprays over them again so that they cannot be read by outsiders or uninitiated. By these means, he is free to decide whom he wants to initiate into the secret or for whom these works remain design like canvasses. In doing so, he plays with our limited perception and fast judging.

On the impulse to perpetuate his name back then, he wrote short statements or slogans next to the graffiti. At some point he started to write those down in notebooks. Out of the grafitti, little by little, the basis for his tattoo works as well as all the other works developed that transcend between the different media. Monty’s comments, which we can find carefully arranged in the exhibition, have already been sprayed in public space or have been tattooed on bodies. Here, we need to make a little excursion to his performative tattooing practice, which is rather unusual but nevertheless consequently integrates itself into his works with texts and his kind of poetry. Monty Richthofen determines what kind of tattoo people, who agree to this process, will receive. This happens though only after a long and intimate conversation. The participants don’t see the result until the completion of the tattooing.

Monty Richthofen’s comments transcend different levels, in the analogue as well as the digital space. It is important for the artist to have these flow into one another. Hence, his notes – documentation and snapshots of his life - go on a journey, from a slip of paper to a book, onto a wall, as a photo on the Internet or onto a body. They enable him to critically interact with the outside world and manifest themselves in different ways, depending on the space or situation.

As different as the works of the two artists may be, they are similar in their concern. Could it be that Monty’s works express what is burdening Judas‘ soul, or could they work as an attempt to verbalise Judas’ characters in sculpture and painting? In any case, both seem to have in mind to voice that vulnerability is nothing negative and that mistakes are a good thing to learn from. Whereas Judas believes in the vulnerability in each of us, no matter how strong we appear on the surface, Monty is convinced that we should put our cards on the table, to face each other ‘naked’ and to acknowledge our vulnerability to better understand and deal with one another.

It is also about spontaneity and confidence. To entrust oneself to others, to let go, be it for a tattoo or during a performance. Judas Companion’s masks and the figures in her paintings just scream out what they feel. Monty Richthofen’s notes are spontaneous, provocative confrontations with his surroundings.

This way, a dialogue of liberated emotions and thoughts emerges, which aim to interact and interchange with us, unfiltered and unadorned.

Photography by Choreo