Furthering the ideas of systematic reordering present in his sculptures, Thomas Helbig's paintings are often derived from images and methodologies gleaned from instructional art books. Half-completing the lessons, Helbig omits the final stages: his canvases, suggestive of landscapes or portraits, become longing abstractions based equally in aesthetic impression and subversive formulation. Braun Welle depicts a virgin land evoking the sublime engagement with nature found in The Hudson School's new world paintings. Devoid of picturesque detail, Helbig envisions a barren terrain, offering dystopian promise.
Thomas Helbig's paintings approach abstraction with a quirky intimacy. Set in wonky hand-made frames, his canvases exude a contemplative authority, broaching high culture with folk craft. Reminiscent of the black forms of Robert Motherwell or Franz Kline, Maschine resurrects modernist principles of artistic autonomy, creating a unique platform in which Helbig engages with art and history in a personal way. Expressionistically rendered in chalky tones, Maschine manifests a corrupted aesthetic; his clunky form enshrined in a muddy painterly field alludes to a defunct beauty, its unresolved composition encapsulating the poetic failure of ideas.
BIOGRAPHY
1967Born in Rosenheim
Lives and works in Berlin
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2005
Galerie R'diger Sch?ttle
2004
Galerie Ben Kaufmann, M'nchen
S'dseehausen, Maschenmode, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin
Painting on the roof, Museum Abteiberg, M'nchengladbach
2002
TIERE, Elternhaus Thomas Palme, Immenstadt im Allg'u
FRIEDE, FREIHEIT, FREUDE, Maschenmode, Berlin
Gro'e Kunstausstellung Sommer 2002 im Pazifik, PAZIFIK, Berlin
Urwald, Privatwohnung Hajo von Gottberg, Berlin
Sch'ne Aussicht, Herr Schweins, Galerie Otto Schweins, K'ln
Druidin, Menschenraum, Berlin
2001
Viva November, St?dtische Galerie Wolfsburg
Brown, The Approach, London
Montana Sacra (Circles 5), ZKM, Karlsruhe
Im Wandel der Liebe zu uns selbst und des Gesichtssinns im, Maschenmode, Berlin
Conversations, The Trade Apartment, London
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Selected Works Of Ts
Thomas Helbig's Rom emerges as a palimpsest of muted expression. Obliterated in a blizzard of gauzy brushwork, Helbig's forms appear as half-articulate sentiments: architectural shapes, reticent drips, and mumbled textures surface through the mists as revenants of their former selves. Proposing a literally whitewashed narrative, Rom conceives landscape as intangible space, creating an epic romanticism tinged with disorienting solitude.
Commanding with a painterly dynamism, Thomas Helbig's abstractions strive to capture the essence of power. Within his raw canvases, Helbig alludes to the unwieldy forces of nature, and the representational modes used to harness its vastness. Stylistically, Helbig recycles art history, implicating visual language as reflective of ideology: from the political subtexts of abstraction, to the religious spiritualism of romanticism. In Seele, Helbig creates a field of high drama, his blacks and blues churning with the unpredictable depth of night. Reminiscent of Turner's climactic impressionism, Helbig's Seele suggests both haunting landscape and stormy psychology.
Reworking the theme of Picasso's Girl Before A Mirror, Thomas Helbig's Wilde Mit Spiegel sets up a questionable allure, positing the perception of beauty as a consequence of excess. Hidden within an abstract field of wild brushwork and gory splatters, Helbig paints a figure, profiled as grotesque caricature. His Holbien-ish shrew is defined by her painterly construction, the mimetic qualities of the media bubbling as boils and warts, crackling like matted hair; above her head a chandelier of gobby yellow suggests tarnished halo. To the left, an orange vignette doubles as figurative mirror and comic speech bubble brandishing a sketchy image of pleasantry.
Thomas Helbig's Jung Frau offers a morbid fascination. Using the textural contrasts of materials, Helbig creates a biomorphic abstraction veering between charred and fossilised remain and science fiction species. Embedding smooth moulded forms in rough globular material, Jung Frau possesses a tactile physicality at odds with itself: fragile and brutal, elevated and primitive. Coated in high gloss black paint, Helbig's sculpture is both sinister and humorous, suggesting apocalyptic narratives that are glamorous and abject.
Conclusion:
At first glance Thomas Helbig's sculptures appear to be futuristic ruins; bizarre and broken finds hinting at some remote gothic civilisation, glorifying its defunct authority.
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