For her first exhibition in the United States, the young German artist Julia Oschatz fills the gallery with video, paintings, drawings, and prints on canvas, in an installation that centers around a large “cave.” Constructed of cardboard boxes, piled to the ceiling, one upon the other like an igloo, the cave serves as a theater in which to view her projected video “epic” Hello Hollow.

The protagonist of Hello Hollow, as well as the four other short video pieces on view, is a gray-suited being with a human body and the featureless head of an animal that might be a bear, a donkey, a mouse, or in the artist’s words, “a little bit of a devil and a werewolf mixed in.” Described by Oschatz as Wesen (translated from German for “being” or “essence”) it is neither male nor female, human nor animal. Like a postmodern Don Quixote, the Wesen drifts into the landscape on an aimless quest.

Oschatz’s short, looped videos are like stories without beginnings or endings. Sequenced like channel-surfing, they uniquely combine performance, animation, and imagery from her paintings. The landscape portions are digitally processed and reassembled from commercial tourist videos that she rents from the local library. The sound tracks are playfully composed pastiches of appropriated music (German lieder, movie themes, pop music) and sound effects.

The ongoing odyssey of the Wesen, whether running through the forest, sailing on tall ships to South Sea Islands, or trekking across snow-capped mountains, is also depicted in works on canvas, produced in a wide variety of styles unified by theme and a palette that is mostly limited to black, white, and gray. Refuting the notion of the finished work, she executes her vision by constantly changing techniques, media, and scale. By hanging her paintings, drawings and etchings in large salon-style groupings, Oschatz alludes to the quick visual scan enforced by the proliferation of still, moving, and digital images in a media-saturated culture. Rich in allusions ranging from nineteenth-century Symbolist painting to the allegory of Plato’s Cave, and the isolated landscapes of Iceland and New Zealand (both places where the artist has lived), Julia Oschatz’s works reflect her diverse interests in philosophy, literature, music, cinema, and theater.

Julia Oschatz was born in Darmstadt, Germany in 1970. She currently lives and works in Frankfurt and Berlin.