Ulla Maibaum lives and works in Germany.
Through her extraordinarily assured paintings, Ulla Maibaum invites us into her mysterious and vaguely disturbing cinematic world. Faces are veiled, and sliced by vegetation or otherwise hidden from view. Her characters seem to be lost in a private Edenic reverie or the void of an existential forest.
 
Painted in watercolor on thin gossamer like Japanese paper, their material fragility is countered by bold scale and confident brushwork. There is a certain off hand insouciance to this combination that is reminiscent of Luc Tuymans' effortless brush marks, and the bravado of other young German painters working in the Leipzig school style.