Painting on a 1:1 scale, distinctive to the artist’s practice, Helene Appel conjures images that straddle the threshold between realism, sculpture and abstraction. She uses paints and painting techniques that allow her to closely emulate the specificities of each individual subject she paints: the materials she uses, such as oil, watercolour or encaustic, start to resemble the object itself, giving the painted object a physical and three-dimensional presence.
Appel depicts objects from everyday life. In her work we see the inherent aesthetic qualities of trees, seashores, fishing nets, loose folds of fabric; whilst being sure to never avoid the less pleasant details from domestic life, we may also encounter discarded vegetable peelings ready to be thrown onto the compost pile and kitchen sinks full to the brim of murky washing up water and detritus.
Through the process of painting, the artist activates the objects she portrays, empowering them with a sense of autonomy or agency. In this sense, Appel’s paintings can be understood more like portraiture where the objects depicted belong to their own non-anthropocentric world.
Helene Appel (b. 1976, Karlsruhe, Germany) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.