Sophie von Hellermann: New Waves

Sophie von Hellermann's soft-hued paintings are imbued with the workings of her subconscious. She applies pure pigment on unprimed canvas very quickly and with a lightness of touch to portray scenes as they appear to her. Von Hellermann's paintings swiftly tangle a mixture of her contemplations on current affairs, literature and mythology with what she observes; they situate themselves in a space between imagination and reality. Working in succession, her broad-brushed washes follow a continuity of thought where one painting often leads to the next.

For her exhibition New Waves von Hellermann takes Margate, the location of her studio, as the grounding for a series of paintings that emerge from her thoughts on the sea. Von Hellermann synchronously slides through time periods using the constant of the wave across her paintings to pause at intuitive anchor points from literary, artistic, and political histories. Portraits of Titans from Greek mythology appear next to sailors, the protagonist Prospero from Shakespeare's The Tempest and poet T.S Eliot writing The Waste Land on Margate Sands. Storms of plastic pollution swirl around images of Britannia's ships ruling the waves. Metaphors of the sea encircle the exhibition and are used by von Hellermann as harbingers of political and environmental change and waves of information.

Sophie von Hellermann (b.1975 in Munich, Germany) lives and works in London and Margate, United Kingsom. She received her BFA from Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf and an MFA from Royal College of Art, London. She is a founding member of hobbypopMUSEUM. Selected solo exhibitions include: Stufen zur Kunst - Sophie von Hellermann, Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover (2017); After a Fashion-A Play with Fire, Vilma Gold, London (2015); Novel Ways, Greene Naftali, New York (2013); Elephant in the Room, Firstsite, Colchester (2013); Sophie von Hellermann & Josh Smith, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2010); Judgement Day, Chisenhale Gallery, London; and Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (2006). Selected group exhibitions include: That Continuous Thing: Artists and the Ceramics Studio, 1920-today, Tate St Ives, St Ives (2017); Jahresgaben 2016, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2016); Call and Response, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York (2015); Empathy and Abstraction: Modernist Women in Germany, Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2015); I Cheer a Dead Man's Sweetheart, De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill on Sea (2014); Out of the House, Cranford Collection, Fundacion Banco Santander, Madrid (2013); In the disappearing mist, the gift of whispers, Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2012); Watercolour, Tate Britain, London (2011).