Thomas Helbig

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Selected Works by Thomas Helbig

Thomas Helbig

Braune Welle

2001
oil on wood
185 x 250 cm

Click on images to enlarge

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

Maschine

2005
oil on wood
205 x 160 cm

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.

Thomas Helbig

Rom

2005
oil on wood
155 x 125

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.

Thomas Helbig

Seele

2005
oil on wood
195.5 x 150 cm

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.

Thomas Helbig

Wilde mit Spiegel

2004
oil on wood
200 x 160 cm

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

Jungfrau

2005
diverse materials
85 x 85 x 90 cm

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.

Thomas Helbig

Vater

2005
diverse materials
150 x 150 x 90 cm

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. In fact they are made from contemporary debris, objects and knickknacks found in dustbins and flea markets. Helbig’s studio is a laboratory of invention where the discarded ephemera of daily life is broken and reassembled with construction materials to create totems of fictional power. Through this process of abstraction, Helbig poses formal solutions as literary escapism, drawing a timeless mythology from the everyday. Taking both barbaric and poetic form, Vater exudes a romantic supremacy, creating an alien parallel to known history.