Sabine Dehnel

On View
July 21 – August 31, 2022M

Contemporary Art Matters is delighted to present Sabine Dehnel, new works by this Berlin based artist, featuring photographs and paintings from her recent series.

Sabine Dehnel, Zauberland, 2018, Acrylic on Canvas, 59 x 78¾ in.

The four paintings exhibit the artist’s interest in presenting the model, seen from behind, in a landscape. The figures come from her personal archive of family photographs and her own experiences, yet because we don’t have a face, the viewer is invited to follow the figure or even place themselves in the scene. In Zauberland (Magic Land) two figures appear in a fall forest, the young girl in the foreground is solid, but the larger adult figure beyond her hovers between solid and immaterial, somewhat ghostly as if dissolving into the landscape. It evokes those moments in childhood when a parent disappears from sight while on a walk or hike. In Angel’s fly the figure seems to be caught mid-movement while wearing a patterned coat, she appears on an athletic court that fades into abstraction in the background. Nur Getraumt (Just a Dream) and Million Miles are smaller paintings that feature a young boy and a young girl retrospectively, the figures heading into an unidentified landscape, which much like our memories, dissolves into an unrecognizable past.

Sabine Dehnel, Angels Fly, 2018, Acrylic on Canvas, 59 x 66⅞ in.

Sabine Dehnel, born in 1971, moved to Los Angeles after receiving her master’s degree from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and continued her studies at the Otis College of Fine Art and Design. In 2002, she received the SCA Art Prize for Young Art, after which she received several European studio and scholarship grants for her work. In 2005, Dehnel moved to Berlin and established her studio in a former barracks. In 2012, she co-founded LSD Gallery on Potsdamer Strasse with several artists and was one of its lead directors for more than two years. Her work has been featured in numerous institutions, including the Frieder Burda Museum and the Columbus Art Foundation in Ravensburg, and belongs to esteemed collections such as the DZ Bank and The National Gallery of Denmark. She was an artist in residence at the Museum Kunst de Wesküste, Föhr in 2018. In 2021 she was featured in a joint exhibition at Hilbertraum called La Magia with artist Ellen De Laine.