Janet Werner on Distortion, Collage, and Landscape with Legs

Janet Werner, a leading contemporary painter, discusses her practice and recent exhibition "Landscape with Legs" at Anat Ebgi Gallery in an interview with Elephant. Since 2015, Werner has shifted from fictional portraits to showing the seams of collage in her paintings, creating ruptures and misalignments that suggest simultaneity. She uses source images from fashion magazines and art historical references, drawn to their complexity and the gaze of models. Werner aims to create new subjects through transformation, investing figures with subjectivity. The exhibition title comes from a painting where legs carry a landscape, reflecting her increased incorporation of landscapes as counterpoints to figures, representing the subconscious. She balances beauty and discomfort to add psychological depth, using distortion and the grotesque to complicate narratives. Werner sees her characters as open-ended, often manifesting defiance and vulnerability, with elements of self-portraiture. She plans to further explore landscape as a space of contemplation in future work.