Urban Household
Julia Willms' landscape images show coastal areas made up of the finest sand dunes, on which waves crush and break into foam. A skylight is a source of dazzling light, which wanders through the room, creating shadows that make the walls look more three-dimensional than they are. The roof, which covers everything, is supported not by rock faces, but merely by load-bearing elements. Washing lines - bathed in a golden light - partition the sky into strips... One's gaze glides over the reflective surface of the lake, the shore of which is populated with trees, as well as small houses, aligning their windows to the opposite shore, right up to the edge of the bath...
The word "urban" promises a broad spectrum of meanings, but virtually always in connection with the city. The urban is equated with construction design, cultural diversity: distinct residential areas, with corresponding subcultures, lend the overall picture the promise of a certain advantage in terms of development options when compared with its counterpart, the rural.
Human perception, however, is pivotal. It declares an environment as functional, defines urbanity as a quality of life. Man fills the space, with his desires, visions, wants... But what if this is not the case? In Julia Willms' digital collages, open landscapes occupy the closed room. The eyes of the viewer are beguiled by a seductive idyll, which upon closer inspection, however, takes on increasingly surreal characteristics. What was expected to be natural is in fact artificial, the inside is outside, the vast expanse appears limited, proximity lies in the far distance. Urbanity - structural substance - surrounds nature, quietly, silently, peacefully. This entanglement does not appear disturbing: the landscape within the house becomes the counterculture of the familiar, the architectonic frame becomes the living space of another, albeit familiar, world.
Text: Annick Meyer
Translation by Claire Weyland
Photos © Julia Willms