Dani Jakob

"The liquid colours go where I want them to."

Dani Jakob is certainly not a ‘painter’ - she is much more than that. Her work is three-dimensional when she creates installations or paints. Her paintings are more like “bodies of colour” and remind me of Gotthard Graubner´s “Farbraumkörper”. Not in how they look, but in their concept. Dani treats the painting as a whole and often lets the depth of her stretcher frames vary.

She used to work on silk as a medium....

Dani Jakob is certainly not a ‘painter’ - she is much more than that. Her work is three-dimensional when she creates installations or paints. Her paintings are more like “bodies of colour” and remind me of Gotthard Graubner´s “Farbraumkörper”. Not in how they look, but in their concept. Dani treats the painting as a whole and often lets the depth of her stretcher frames vary.

She used to work on silk as a medium. “The colours start to glow on this material”, Dani explains. “I use silk colours on different materials. At the moment what interests me is how these colours works on rough surfaces, like Hessian.” Diverging from this, she has also begun to use tulle netting in her recent works.

To accomplish her colour gradients, she paints on the floor. “Contrary to vertical painting I have more control, the liquid colours go where I want them to. I then hang the painting on the wall to get a different perspective in order to judge it better.”

Dani Jakob comes from floor installation. But at one point she just got fed up with people walking on her artwork so she started to bring her installations into the vertical position. As an outcome, she says it has become more challenging for her to concentrate on smaller formats, prompting her to create “objects”.

A Singer sewing machine helps her to do more complex objects, like the tulle bodies with appliqué work. “My mother is a tailor, and I am using her resources”, Dani admits, opening my eyes to smaller details in her studio linked to sewing. Enjoying the artwork with draped white silk and after discovering a photograph of an untitled artwork of hers from 2004 I had to ask if she has ever visited Tilman Riemenschneider altars. “Oh yes, all of them. You hit the nail on the head!”
For Tilman Riemenschneider the reliefs were vehicles to show cascades of fabric, for Dani Jakob, her paintings show the variety of textiles, their structures and how these interact with colour.

However, her spatial interventions are still ongoing. Have you seen the bird´s nest in the top corner of her studio window?

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Dani Jakob is certainly not a ‘painter’ - she is much more than that. Her work is three-dimensional when she creates installations or paints. Her paintings are more like “bodies of colour” and remind me of Gotthard Graubner´s “Farbraumkörper”. Not in how they look, but in their concept. Dani treats the painting as a whole and often lets the depth of her stretcher frames vary.

She used to work on silk as a medium. “The colours start to glow on this material”, Dani explains. “I use silk colours on different materials. At the moment what interests me is how these colours works on rough surfaces, like Hessian.” Diverging from this, she has also begun to use tulle netting in her recent works.

To accomplish her colour gradients, she paints on the floor. “Contrary to vertical painting I have more control, the liquid colours go where I want them to. I then hang the painting on the wall to get a different perspective in order to judge it better.”

Dani Jakob comes from floor installation. But at one point she just got fed up with people walking on her artwork so she started to bring her installations into the vertical position. As an outcome, she says it has become more challenging for her to concentrate on smaller formats, prompting her to create “objects”.

A Singer sewing machine helps her to do more complex objects, like the tulle bodies with appliqué work. “My mother is a tailor, and I am using her resources”, Dani admits, opening my eyes to smaller details in her studio linked to sewing. Enjoying the artwork with draped white silk and after discovering a photograph of an untitled artwork of hers from 2004 I had to ask if she has ever visited Tilman Riemenschneider altars. “Oh yes, all of them. You hit the nail on the head!”
For Tilman Riemenschneider the reliefs were vehicles to show cascades of fabric, for Dani Jakob, her paintings show the variety of textiles, their structures and how these interact with colour.

However, her spatial interventions are still ongoing. Have you seen the bird´s nest in the top corner of her studio window?

Dani Jakob