Among Trees, Among Sand Grains

In her paintings, Helene Appel depicts objects of everyday life with great precision. Appel presents them in a bird’s-eye view, set against an untreated canvas at true-to-life scale. Upon closer inspection, the radical nature of this approach becomes clear. Breaking completely with the tradition of still life, Appel does not develop a painterly signature or emphasize her distinctive style. Instead, she concentrates intensely on finding an appropriate mode of expression for each of her subjects, thereby highlighting their individuality. Despite their realistic representation, Appel’s works are characterized by a high degree of abstraction. The impression is one of a distanced gaze, a tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar, which leaves viewers with the question of what our relationship to our environment is.

Helene Appel (b. 1976, Karlsruhe) studied at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and at the Royal College of Art in London. In 2011, she received the Goslar Kaiserring Fellowship, and in 2019, the two-year Dorothea Erxleben Fellowship at the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig. She lives and works in Berlin.

This book is part of the exhibition Helene Appel. Representation