Alex & John Gailla
CORPUS

March 28, 2025

 

All Monotypes from the series “Horses” 40 cm X 30 cm

We are a visual artist duo based in Berlin and Switzerland, collaborating for over twenty years. Our work focuses on the image — its materiality, specifically, the notions of the body and the representation of form.

The photographic image is the starting point for all our research. We interrogate its meaning, exploring it as both a vehicle for ideas and a window into everyday life, as well as the realities and issues of contemporary societies. Our primary field of research and source material is the Internet. We photograph images from the web directly, through a computer screen. The distortions resulting from this “reappropriationist” process are integral to our creative practice.

These captured images then undergo extensive experimentation on paper through our “drip-printing” technique—a transfer process akin to monotype. Repeated hundreds of times, this method introduces elements of chance and unpredictability, deconstructing and fragmenting the prints. This procedure imbues them with a richer, multi-dimensional reading potential.

By treating photography as a material, we delve into its substance — its ink and the forms it shapes — breaking down its figurative elements to shift them toward abstraction. The resulting paintings, created entirely in ink, extend this dialogue between photography and painting, taking a distinctly painterly approach.

Photos by Alexine Chanel, Fanny Bovey and Jörg Hasheider