At GAVU Cheb we are presenting the work of Katharina Gierlach (b.1983), another artist associated with the Bavarian border region. She studied painting and art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg under professors Ralph Fleck and Ottmar Hörl. Gierlach currently lives and works in Cologne and Winklarn, in the Schwandorf district of Upper Palatinate. Gierlach usually works in larger series. In the one she is presenting in Cheb, she has turned to her other favourite subject - nature. However, this subject matter does not appear here in an unbridled form, although water lilies, her central theme, also occur in the wild. She finds inspiration for her paintings in parks, nature reserves, and private or botanical gardens. It is thus nature in its cultivated and decorative dimension that corresponds to the aesthetics of her paintings. After all, the same theme is inextricably interwoven in art history, notably with Claude Monet and his garden at Giverny, but Gierlach discovered it herself during a study trip to the USA in 2016. As the title of the exhibition suggests, water lily ponds, which radiate beauty and tranquillity, are places that can provide people with a refuge, a refugium from the anxieties of the outside world and the disasters that are increasingly thrust upon us through the media. It is precisely these qualities that Katharina Gierlach interprets in an impressive way, and the reason why her paintings have particular relevance today.