Εθνικό Μουσείο Σύγχρονης Τέχνης
Untitled

Helene Appel

Untitled

2008

The work is displayed as part of the permanent exhibition

Painting

Oil on linen
235 x 138 x 3.5 cm
Presented as part of the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift

Helene Appel (1976, Karlsruhe, Germany) paints everyday and mundane objects as faithfully as possible, focusing our attention on their usually neglected beauty. Her list includes, among others, tree trunks, pasta, kitchen towels, rice grains, sand, pavement slabs, pieces of cellophane, raw meat, and fishing nets. She physically examines each object before settling on the proper technique – oil painting, encaustic, acrylic – to achieve the highest precision possible. She depicts them from their top view, with the object mounted onto a raw linen canvas in its natural size, which accordingly defines the frame’s size. Her capacity to flexibly adapt to the particular characteristics of each object becomes the main attribute that sets her apart from the long-standing artistic tradition of still lives. Appel’s observational painting practice renders the ordinary extraordinary and the mundane worthy of closer inspection. Finally, it gives rise to thoughts about the role and meaning of figurative painting today.

In Untitled (2008), Appel depicts remnants from packaging tapes in their natural size, crookedly pasted onto a linen canvas. From afar, they look real; however, upon approaching them, what strikes us is the painter’s skill in conveying the three-dimensional impression through the rendering of the folds, the shadings, and the sheeny quality of the plastic. The painter’s choice to focus on a single object cancels any reference to the detailed and overladen legacy of the still lives of the past – instead, Appel balances between realism, sculpture, and abstraction. The more one observes this silent work, the more intensely immersed one is in the mysterious material reality of the humble packaging tapes and the unanticipated connotations they evoke.

Helene Appel was born in 1976 in Karlsruhe. She lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and the Royal College of Art in London. She received the distinguished Goslar Kaiserring scholarship in 2011 and the two-year Dorothea Erxleben scholarship of the Braunschweig University of Art in 2019. Her works have been presented in solo exhibitions in various spaces (selection): Drawing Room, Hamburg (2023); Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich (2020); The Approach, London (2019); James Cohan Gallery, New York (2014).

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