Curator
An artwork is always a connecting link between diverse individuals. Simply by being viewed, it generates an interaction between the artist and the audience, unfolding multiple layers of meaning and structures of relationship. Once a work encounters a vis-à-vis beyond its creator, it begins to reveal its own narrative. Such a point of connection is embodied in the piece Love Song by Julia Maurer — part of the STRABAG Art Collection — which served as the initial inspiration for the exhibition Somewhere In Between at Y Gallery.
Somewhere In Between offers a compelling overview of Julia Maurer’s current artistic practice and body of work, while also marking her first solo presentation in Ljubljana, introducing her to the Slovenian audience. At the same time, her work Love Song opens a window into the recent past. It speaks of closeness, distance, and intimacy, while also reflecting the long-standing relationship between the STRABAG ART Collection and the artist. In 2008, Julia Maurer applied for the STRABAG ART Award and received a recognition prize—an early connection that continues to resonate today. This continuity reflects the STRABAG ART Collection’s core mission: to collect deeply, to follow artists’ development over time, and to provide sustained support.
STRABAG ART began thirty years ago with a modest but visionary goal: to integrate contemporary art into the daily life of a construction company and to nurture emerging artistic voices. The foundation for today’s STRABAG ART Award was laid in 1994 and with the award’s internationalization in 2009, young talents from across Europe gained the opportunity to participate, turning it into a vibrant platform for cultural exchange and cross-border artistic dialogue.
This spirit of openness and long-term commitment continue to define STRABAG ART’s work today, forming the backdrop against which the collaboration with Julia Maurer has flourished. And now, it brings us to the present moment in Ljubljana, where the STRABAG ART Award 2026 will open its doors to Slovenian artists.
With the exhibition Somewhere In Between at Y Gallery, we therefore extend a dual invitation: to Slovenian artists, to apply for the upcoming STRABAG ART Award 2026; and to all visitors, to immerse themselves in the extraordinary, atmospheric world of Julia Maurer’s art.
Vanessa Bersis
The works of Julia Maurer unfold between two seemingly opposing poles that, within her visual language, form an interdependent system: between the human figure, which occupies the central place on the canvas, and the landscape, in which solitary, almost isolated figures are set deep into space—if not nearly dissolve within it. Landscape and figures are not antagonistic entities but rather mirror one another as distinct expressions of the same inner tension, mood, and exploration of the individual’s intimate world. Maurer associates her works with the Finnish term sielunmaisema, literally translated as “landscape of the soul” or “soulscape,” encapsulating her central concern with the visualization of subjectivity.
Through multilayered applications of paint, Maurer constructs a space suspended between the visible and the vanishing; a liminal zone between material presence and absence. The sense of transience and timelessness heightened by a restrained colour palette, in which hues typically remain within delicate, closely related tonalities. These analogous tones and overlapping layers of paint evoke a sense of elusiveness and a dreamlike, almost melancholic character. The solitary human figures that populate the landscapes (other side; in shadows; night park) appear as silhouettes without sharply defined contours, often with lowered gazes, withdrawn and turned inward, evoking the notion of an inner landscape. Though small and often barely perceptible, the figures serve as centers of compositional and emotional gravity. Their presence anchors the viewer within an unstable pictorial space, loosened by a high horizon line and a deliberately distorted perspective. Thus, these landscapes do not merely depict the external world, but rather visualize the inner, psychological terrain of the subject.
Both the small figures within the landscape and those rendered on a larger scale—dominating the pictorial surface—share a similar posture: hunched, introspective, and restrained. Their lowered gaze and subdued gestures suggest a state of psychological withdrawal, alluding to a vulnerable self-observation and an inner dialogue that hints at a process of forming the subject’s inner sovereignty.
Maurer approaches the canvas through a meticulously balanced process of construction and deconstruction. Some layers of paint are sanded, washed, or scraped away, allowing subtle textures to surface. The same sensitivity is evident in her figurative scenes, where painted patterns within colour fields—suggestive of fabric or other materials—visually assume the function of texture. A distinctive place within Maurer’s oeuvre is occupied by the sleeping scenes (Love Song; two sleeps), which allude to the hypnopompic state—that fragile moment between sleep and wakefulness. It is an intermediate phase in which reality slowly seeps into consciousness while the imaginary world of dreams dissolves; a moment when thoughts and feelings begin to take form but have not yet acquired the solidity of the waking world.
Maurer masterfully renders this in-between state, that phantom world which can be sensed but never fully grasped. Her works evoke an atmosphere that questions the boundaries of perception and reality, while subtly unfolding inner landscapes of the mind, where landscape and figure intertwine as two manifestations of the same introspective gaze. In an age of constant external stimulation and hyperproduction of images, Julia Maurer’s paintings emphasize the importance of inner psychological space, of quiet coexistence with oneself, and of an awareness of human fragility and vulnerability.
Kristina Ferk
“I think one of the reasons I’ve become a painter is that painting allows me to understand things, other people, and myself without having to use words. In the same way a wordless story can be told. I really like painting’s metalinguistic aspects. In this context, there is also something that I haven´t experienced in the early days, and it is how the process of painting can shift and transform my own perspective, or add new ideas to my way of understanding.”
Julia Maurer
Julia Maurer graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2007, complementing her studies with semesters at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Glasgow School of Art in the United Kingdom. Her work has received several distinctions, including nominations for the Eisler Prize (2008) and the Faistauer Prize (2011), as well as the 3rd Neptun Water Prize (2019). She has participated in artist residencies in Budapest (2013) and at Satama House in Ekenäs, Finland (2020). From 2020 to 2022, she taught painting at Kunstschule Wien. Maurer has exhibited in numerous galleries and institutions, including the Bank Austria Kunstforum (Vienna), Lentos Museum (Linz), Wehrmühle Biesenthal (Germany), and the Austrian Cultural Forum (Budapest), as well as in Viennese venues such as KunstSalon23, Kleine Galerie, and Galerie Wolfrum.
Exhibition opening: Friday, 12 December 2025, 7 pm
The exhibition will be opened by Mr. Sebastian Haselsteiner, Head of STRABAG ART, and Mr. Damjan Kosec, Director of Y Gallery.
Image: Julia Maurer, Love Song, 110 x 165 cm, mixed media on canvas, 2020, STRABAG ART Collection, Vienna, photo: Rudi Froese.
Curators: Vanessa Bersis, Kristina Ferk
Coproduction: STRABAG ART, Y Gallery
English proofreading: Tom Smith
