---

The Magical Realism of Clara Joris

All artists express their muses driven by some personal intrinsic motivators. Musicians have it easier than visual artists because nobody expects a written artist-statement from them after each performance to explain what they were thinking and feeling. People just listen and get out of the music what they get out of it, what they hear and feel. Likewise, writers put their words on paper and that is that. Nobody expects them to also graphically illustrate their own writing. For some inexplicable reason, visual artists are paradoxically expected to write statements to explain their own art, to make lofty intellectual statements about the meaning of their work. Many artists struggle with that. Yet, after all that effort, most viewers of the art don’t even read those statements. They look and see what they see, forming their own impression.

Her current work carries a distinct Asian aesthetic, a gentle realism with direct relations to Japanese and Chinese painting. She uses warm colors, light and airy, understated with subdued hues. Her paintings are underpinned by a strong foundation of refined drawings in classical form, showcasing her profound artistic competence. She said, “I love it when a dreamlike atmosphere intersects reality and imagination.” She explained further, “My art has a tendency toward the intimacy I see in Asian art. It projects an inner peace and it seemingly simplifies life’s complexities. I feel a sense of timeliness.”

This is the arc, the twist in the story, when the artist’s own definitions and self-described meaning of her work converge with the existentialist reality of the immigrant experience. Even before moving to Germany, she was already immersed in the complexity of the cross-cultural experience. Her mother is Swiss born, a foreigner in Spain. Clara left for a period of time to study in England. She has lived in the freewheeling artist quarter of Kreuzberg, Berlin, since 1998. Germany was her home of choice, a place where she was drawn to for feeling constrained and limited artistically in her native Spain. The reality of that migration eventually confronts the artist in the same way it does most who resettle to new lands. When the honeymoon period of excitement and discovery of the new host country ends, immigrants often find themselves in the cultural no-man’s-land, between both cultures but not fully accepted by either.

It was to create a new art category that strayed from the strict guidelines of realism. Magical realism is most often used to describe the literary subgenre popularized by Latin American writers in the 1950s such as Jose Martí and Ruben Darío.

Usually, the story is set in a realistic environment with magical elements. It blurs the line between realistic fiction and fantasy as reality meets dreams and the mystical, creating a form of surrealism. This movement was prevalent in Latin America. The visual artist Clara Joris delved into this literary genre, reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Del amor y otros demonios (Of Love and Other Demons) 1993; and, Jorge Luis Borges Historia de la eternidad (A New Refutation of Time), 1936, and more.

Visually, she was profoundly influenced by impressionists like Paul Gauguin, and by the Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo, who also impressed Joris’ depiction of the female experience and form. She was also influenced by the Berlin based anti-fascist, socio-critical Dadaist artist Hannah Höch. Joris also delved into the films by directors Emir Kusturica, Luis Buñuel and Alfonso Arau, favoring films with the interplay of realism and fantasy.

In each of the series of paintings on these subjects, Joris stays within a refined Asian aesthetic, merging her Spanish roots with the fantastical creative spirit that was captured by her imagination. For example, in her series Lady Bird, Clara Joris couples her self-portraits, interpreted in a metamorphosis, depicting herself with wings, as if an angel. The resulting series of paintings indeed carry a sense of wonderous magic, a dreamscape equally balanced between beauty and illusion. This is most evident in Alles eine Illusion (Everything an illusion), where she explores the convergence of magic and dreams.

Joris is a thinker, someone who reads and analyses. The psychologist Jung is one of her influencers. She delves into philosophy and other intellectual pursuits. All of these aspects work their way into her art, albeit perhaps invisible to the viewer.

One unmistakable aspect of Joris’s art is her visual expression of women, often in self-portraits, in a form of sensitive intimacy. She explores women’s form to symbolically express a feminine mystique, as much veiled in magic as all of her thematic. She also infuses animals in her paintings to show the interconnectivity and belonging between human and animal. Without being overtly feminist, or animal rights oriented, her paintings are symbolic and compelling, making a statement without hitting an articulated message. She evokes subtleties. The body language speaks, small movements project. Details like the dress she wears, or the way she holds her hand, exude intimacy and a feeling of belonging, a gentle romance between reality and symbolism. Her paintings evoke a form of grace, and often depict herself.

Joris has joined artist-in-residency programs, like the Fresh Winds Art Biennale in Iceland, explaining, “I love it when I have a chance to work on cooperative projects and have interplay with other artists. Painting is a solitary act, often in a form of lost loneliness. I love the discovery of other artists. When it works, it is wonderful. I love to network and have cultural exchange.”

Joris’ work exudes realism, fantasy, spiritualism, femininity and mysticism. Something draws us in with an indescribable knowledge that there is something bigger than us that we cannot see. Nonetheless, instantly feel and connect with it, yet we cannot describe it.

The result is a form of vulnerable sensibility and, indeed, magic.