Antonio Grulli (La Spezia, 1979) is an art critic and curator. His projects include curating the Albanian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, the public art project Luci d'Artista in Turin (lucidartistatorino.org) and the study program of the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice. In the past, he was responsible for the collection and contemporary art activities of Palazzo Bentivoglio (Bologna, palazzobentivoglio.org). For the exhibition "weiss sind alle farben. Julia Krahn on harmony" he wrote the following text:
LOGOS
I was transfixed by the very first image I saw when Julia showed me the project. In the first draft of this sentence, I had written, “It took my breath away”, but then I realized how ridiculous such an expression would be when talking about an image—and an entire project—that, for me, has breath as its very center.
Ridiculous and also inaccurate, because the image of that open-mouthed child sparked something inside me, a light able to bring forth and hold together countless elements—as a true symbol does. And it’s no coincidence that this takes place in Regensburg, where a crucial speech was once given on the relationship between man and logos.
In the Christian tradition, logos is the principle of everything; we often interpret it as “word” or “verb.” But logos is also, and, above all, logical and rational thought—the illuminating principle that brings order to chaos. And yet in its deepest meaning logos is also breath. I believe it is in this layering of meanings that the true sense of everything lies. The sense of life itself. And the famous speech by Pope Benedict XVI held right here in Regensburg was centered around this Greek word.
Julia Krahn’s project revolves around the Regensburger Domspatzen, one of the most ancient and most renowned boys’ choirs in the world. In fact, the project actually revolves around the concept of harmony, a condition that is perhaps utopian but sometimes achievable, at least in the musical realm. With portraits of some of the choirboys presented on large, semi-transparent veils ranged along the sides of the exhibition courtyard, it is an ambitious work.
The printing of photographs on large fabric sheets is a fundamental element of the artist’s practice and not just a technical detail. Her use of photography, although always rooted in an intimate approach, often expands to a monumental scale. Julia’s work has lofty ambitions—it enters public space directly, determined to take part in our lives, to provoke thought, to generate collective reflection and debate.
In painting, the equivalent of this vision would be the fresco or mural, long destined for significant and symbolic spaces of community gathering. In this sense, Julia’s work is deeply political—not because of its explicit content, but through the very way it offers itself to the gaze. It does not speak to the individual viewer, but to the collective.
The children in the photographs have their mouths open, caught in the moment of emitting a note, a sound—frozen in time. The semi-transparency of the veil reveals the surrounding architecture and makes these bodies appear almost immaterial, intangible. Above all, they are bodies permeated by light.
The image holds within it a double tension. On one hand, the full potential of a person in the act of singing. On the other hand, a subtle but powerful feeling of aphasia, of breathlessness. And this ambiguity becomes a metaphor for many things—above all for a feeling about our current condition, perhaps even about the West as a whole. Is the absence of voice the absence of thought? Is the absence of thought the absence of breath?
I have always seen breath as a link, an element that is not only symbolic but also physical, capable of uniting the soul with speech. The spirit becomes word and sound through breath. For this reason, perhaps singing is the most divine of all arts. I am not an expert in such matters, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me that singing is at the origin of religion—I may have even read it somewhere. And a choir inevitably carries with it a trace of the divine in the harmony of breaths and souls vibrating in unison.
The exhibition space is also filled with the sound of breathing which almost physically fills the room, and makes it expand and contract as if the architecture itself were breathing. It is a calm but heavy sound, rising and falling. Alongside it, we hear Incipit Lamentatio set to music by Pierluigi da Palestrina. They speak of us—of our time, of wars that seem so new but that are in reality, agonisingly, eternal.
Julia Krahn’s work lives in the present yet it is also timeless, dealing with questions that will always remain a thorn in humanity’s side. And beyond this, it succeeds in a rare aim today, one that many artists seem to have abandoned or withdrawn from; Julia has the courage to bring art back to its origins—as a high reflection on great moral, ethical, and spiritual questions of humanity—while keeping everything grounded in the living body and in real life.
Faith and spirituality not only can, but must have a place in art—otherwise, art itself is diminished, reduced from a discipline capable of embracing cosmic vastness, of confronting the infinite, to a miserable, mechanical pastime tied to a small patch of earth we naïvely think we can understand and control.
Antonio Grulli, 2025
Translation from Italian by Tanya Doubbleday-Rudkin