Dec 3, 2016 – Feb 12, 2017
Lena Henke
Double Concave
In recent years, the sculptor Lena Henke has developed a multifaceted sculptural oeuvre, which she often augments through interventions in exhibition architecture. The central themes of her artistic work are our individual engagement with and reinterpretation of complex systems such as architecture and urban space. Henke establishes an aesthetic vocabulary that evokes artistic movements such as Minimal Art but ironically fractures its flawlessness and material fetishism through the use of banal materials such as tar, concrete, or sand.
Alluding to her intervention at the Kunstverein, where Henke added an extensive balcony to the Villa Salve Hospes, the artist created a small sculpture of its defining element: a section of the balustrade that gave this balcony its distinctive appearance. Its design—a hybrid of the wooden construction around the perimeter of the Kunstverein and the type of fencing common in the USA— reflects the German artist’s own biography, who now lives in New York.