Press Preview: June 11, 2026 | 11 AM – 1 PM
Opening Reception: June 11, 2026 | 5 – 8 PM
On View: June 12 – October 4, 2026
May 26, 2026 (Leipzig, Germany) – Departing from direct representation is not merely an aesthetic choice, but a vital means of grappling with a world in which the very notion of “the real” is under siege—where images are endlessly manipulated, truths are contested and perception itself is a battleground. In Public and Beyond Judgement, Jeanette Mundt’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, the New York artist presents a new series of paintings and a large-scale mural in which familiar art historical motifs accumulate in frenetic layers, losing their contours and veering into abstraction. The exhibition’s title cites a letter Gustave Courbet wrote to his parents, in which he described his paintings as “received by the public and beyond judgement.” Mundt was drawn to the phrase imediately—its “punk” defiance, its suggestion that painting at its most potent operates on its own terms.
Mundt’s subject matter is almost incidental; what matters is what the paint does. Feeling increasingly unmoored in a contemporary visual culture that she describes as “groundless” and “history-less,” she has turned back to genre painting as a means of locating herself, using it as a painterly ground to respond to contemporary culture on a visceral, material level. Classic art historical motifs function as a vehicle rather than a subject: traditional motifs are disassembled and manipulated in an instinctive, almost trance-like painterly state, allowing Mundt to approach abstraction through the back door of representation. In a monoprint-like process, she presses and displaces pigment across the surface of the canvas, generating forms that—although inspired by classical nudes, floral still lifes, or landscapes—impart a contemporary sense of dislocation and pressure. Building up her compositions through layers of oil paint, she experiments with different marks and gestures, partially ceding control by literally moving paint around with implements like knives, cardboard, and plastic. In a world increasingly saturated with images, where their power has waned and the analogue gesture competes with endless digital reproduction, Public and Beyond Judgement asks what potency paint can still hold—and what it means to make a contemporary image in a genre so thoroughly weighted by the past.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
Public and Beyond Judgement by Jeanette Mundt will be on view at G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig from June 12 – October 4, 2026.
Address
Dittrichring 13
04109 Leipzig
Press Preview
June 11, 2026 | 11 AM – 1 PM
Opening Reception
June 11, 2026 | 5 – 8 PM
Opening Hours
Wednesday | 3 – 8 PM
Friday – Sunday | 12 – 5 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays
About Jeanette Mundt:
Jeanette Mundt (b. 1982, USA) lives and works in New York. Mundt has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions at venues including TANK, Shanghai; New Museum, New York; Museion, Bolzano; G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Musée d'art Contemporain, Bordeaux; David Zwirner, New York; Company, New York; Overduin and Co., Los Angeles; Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York; and Bridget Donahue, New York. Her work has been included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, as well as group exhibitions including The Rest, Lisson Gallery; The Vitalist Economy of Painting, curated by Isabelle Graw at Galerie Neu, Berlin; Painting: Now and Forever, Part III, Matthew Marks and Greene Naftali, New York; and Sputterances, Metro Pictures, New York.
About G2 Kunsthalle:
Since its founding in March 2015, the G2 Kunsthalle has publicly exhibited holdings from the private Hildebrand Collection. The focus of the collection is on contemporary painting in Leipzig expanded by other media as well as current national and international positions.
The G2 is a private non-profit institution and has set itself the statutory goal of promoting young emerging artists. Since November 2015, the G2 Kunsthalle has been realizing special exhibition projects in collaboration with artists. The aim of the exhibition activity is a continuous dialogue of the exhibits from the collection with individual or even thematic group exhibitions.
Image credit:
Jeanette Mundt, After Courbet, 2025, oil on canvas, 61 × 61 cm. Courtesy of the artist and SOCIÉTÉ, Berlin. Photo: Ken Castaneda