Thomas Helbig

Eleni Koroneou Gallery is pleased to present the work of Thomas Helbig in a solo exhibition. Thomas Helbig was born in 1967 in Rosenheim, living and working in Berlin.

Thomas Helbg works in several disciplines, primarily drawing, painting and sculpture. Victory and defeat, violence, as well as apocalyptic demise are all references present in his sculptures. Searching flea markets, the artist finds figurines and discarded lawn ornaments such as Greek nudes, gnomes, animals and other objects which he fragment, contort and transforms into biomorphic abstractions. Helbig breathes a new life into the objects by giving them rebirth as completely unique objects. Brutal in appearance, these mutated, biomorphic shapes are at the same time strangely beguiling.

The paintings and drawings of Thomas Helbig, suggestive of landscapes or portraits, become longing abstractions. The figurative is dissolved into organic mysterious abstract images. Thrown away pieces of metal or wood become his canvases. In the current exhibition the paintings and drawings show hovering and flying forms that come from above, in order to demonstrate an allusion to the cosmos and the universe. These forms appear to be weightless and they recall airplanes, UFOs or stars accumulations, which are for Helbig an expression of Baroque illusionism. The works give a hint impression of something familiar, however they remain enigmatic and ambiguous.

Helbig has participated in numerous exhibitions in Museums and Art institutions among others in Stern der Musen, Oldenburger Kunstverein, 2008; Imagination becomes Reality, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2007: Rings of Saturn, Tate Modern, London, 2006; Hands up, baby, hands up!, Oldenburger Kunstverien, 2003; Painting on the roof, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, 2003.