Works 1992 – 2001

The tension in Gerken-Grieshaber’s images is remarkable due to the underlying antagonism. Unlike here earlier pencil drawings, she now works with charcoal and acrylic paints straight from the bottle, directly on to the paper. This technique creates fine threads in bold movements, which makes the figurative components appear as if they have been drawn with a crayon. In sections, colours were also applied with wide strips of cardboard: drawing and painting create an intense fusion: figural drawings from an expressive force. Helga Gerken-Grieshaber uses the reduction of the physical to concentrate and liberate the basics. The starting point of her work is the assurance of one’s own existence, the reflection in the mirror, tracing development and being. “Even when the images are not strictly speaking self-portraits, the implacability of assuring oneself is evocate of the obsessive consequence, as is visible in artists such as Rembrandt or van Gogh whose constant gazes into the mirror are reflecting in the substance and transition of their existence.” (Dr. Hans Gercke)

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