Dear Sir or Madam, dear art lovers at Galerie Kley,
I, too, would like to warmly welcome you to the exhibition “Does beauty make happy?”, featuring approximately 50 selected works by the artist Angelika Jelich.

Angelika Jelich studied fine arts in Münster in the mid-to-late 1970s at the University of Education and the University of Münster. She is based here in Münster, though she is also frequently found in New York. Not far from there, on Long Island, she has a base where she spends several weeks each year.
In her art, Angelika Jelich favors the cheerful and the positive. And yet, with her diverse groups of works, she challenges the viewer, whether through the unusual combination of different materials, provocative statements, or thought-provoking questions. Whether floral aesthetics or urban everyday culture—her color-intensive works spark curiosity
In the second group of “Transparencies,” for example, well-known figures from Anglo-American culture are combined with statements such as “I have a secret,” “Hope in the morning,” or “Enjoy life – be happy” to form artistic visual units that certainly invite reflection. For Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, and even the Beatles convey messages to us that we would not necessarily expect in this context. The artist alone is responsible for this new context.
What they all have in common, however, is a generally positive context, and parallels to Pop Art are certainly evident.
This is also the case with the painting “Diva,” which features keywords such as “Love” and “Live.” But since this particular image depicts a celebrity like Maria Callas while simultaneously confronting the viewer with the statement “I’m invisible,” one can certainly detect a certain provocation. After all, who was more in the spotlight than Callas?
Yet even without any accompanying text, Jelich’s transparencies invite a closer look. “Young couple at the water” allows for a wide variety of interpretations. What is happening between the two young people right now? The young woman’s direct gaze into the camera raises questions. Questions that everyone is free to answer for themselves; the artist leaves plenty of room for this.
Another group of works consists of the collages, a small selection of which is on display in the cabinet room. Here, one must look more closely to decipher the conglomeration of different materials. Cardboard, foil, photography, and paint merge into a wonderfully aesthetic unity.
And here, too, the design of text and painting is not conceived as a contrast; rather, they belong together. In this way, the collages form a bridge to the transparencies.
My favorite: Marilyn with her message “I love you.”

Painting plays a central role in Angelika Jelich’s artistic practice. Her work is dominated by floral and colorful abstractions. Her large-scale works, in particular, exude a certain liveliness and lightness, combined with a playful harmony of colors.
A very bold, impasto application of paint points to Jelich’s passion for working with color. She uses acrylic paints just as much as pigment paints. One might think she is not painting the canvas with them, but rather modeling it. In this way, the paintings take on a relief-like character.
Some are marked with scratches (e.g., the large portrait-format piece on the long wall), revealing underlying layers of paint.
Angelika Jelich truly explores color; she possesses a keen instinct for color composition and color effects. This is also evident in the painting “Colors 1” in the fireplace room. It shows a series of red, green, turquoise, and yellow splashes of color on a white background. The dots of varying sizes, with color gradients, blends, and splatters, as well as their relatively free horizontal and vertical arrangement, give the painting an organic feel, like a flower bed viewed from above.
Angelika Jelich’s paintings appear lively, downright dynamic. The square pigment painting on the headboard wall, for example, looks like a swirl of stylized flower forms caught in a yellow vortex of color.
Let’s move on to another fascinating group of works: the photographs on acrylic glass. Here, too, Angelika Jelich remains true to her floral and uplifting motifs, whose arrangements evoke unusual visual realities.
She arranges artificial flowers, butterflies, and smileys in specific ways—for example, into a bouquet, a star, or a circle—sometimes placed on a black background or, as in our invitation image, scattered as if by chance, and combined with painting. I would describe these incredibly luminous compositions as modern still lifes. Ephemeral in terms of the motif’s composition, yet preserved solely through its capture on film.
Speaking of luminous: the lightbox is, of course, also luminous. There are four motifs to choose from, which can be swapped out depending on the mood or message. “In love, couple on red,” “Oh boy,” “Peace,” and “Yoga.” The motifs, which at times appear childishly naive,
already possess a high luminosity even without light, which is naturally enhanced further by the LED lighting.
With her diverse body of work, Angelika Jelich has a broad formal range. However, thematic overlaps then serve as a unifying thread, leading to a cohesive body of work.
By the way: Most of the small- and large-format works are one-of-a-kind pieces. However, the number of copies for the transparencies and photographs is kept very low, ranging from 3 to a maximum of 6.
Thank you for your attention. Stay cheerful and positive!