Felicitas Goltz

The paintings of Felicitas Goltz draw equally from the visual strangeness of daily life, the social encounters fostered by social media, and the plenitude of imagery found on the internet generally. Evoking a world shaped by smartphones as much as her own direct observation and inward imagination, Goltz’s artistry is fundamentally concerned with translation: how contemporary experience is filtered, distorted, and emotionally absorbed through images. At first glance, her paintings can appear almost documentarian. Yet this initial realism gives way to the subtle distortions or deliberately “wonky” qualities that come to light upon closer examination. Intentional weirdness is central to how the works operate. Without explicitly locating her subjects within a fixed narrative or timeframe, Goltz allows viewers to project stories onto the objects and environments she depicts—iPhone screens, LED TVs, all the assorted mirrors which accompany us through public and domestic life. Her figures—often young women rendered somewhere between specificity and anonymity—are not specific individuals so much as generalized composites that accrue a host of pleasant and unpleasant associations, identifications, and projections. Portrayed within intimate, everyday scenes, Goltz’s paintings reflect broader social experiences surrounding femininity, self-image, and visibility in contemporary culture. Her highly personalized use of color fleshes out soft layers of atmosphere and depth, capturing the shifting emotional registers through which digital life is experienced and remembered.