Um-Ringen, Helga Madera, oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm, 2023
Text:The exhibition KÖRPER brings together works by Helga Madera that approach the human body through a visual language that is both compelling and restrained. At its core is not idealisation, but the search for expression — for that moment in which emotion, posture, and inner state condense within the figure.
Madera’s works address the human being in its ambivalence: between presence and vulnerability, movement and stillness, proximity and distance. The body becomes a space of resonance for existential questions and conditions. These are not closed narratives, but open visual propositions that invite the viewer into a quiet dialogue.
At the same time, the artist reflects on painting itself. The body serves as a point of departure for compositional decisions, for exploring contrasts in colour, and for articulating movement in space. Line and surface, gesture and structure enter into a dynamic relationship.
The works presented were created directly from the live model — both as drawings and as paintings executed directly on canvas. This immediate working process lends the works a particular sense of spontaneity, vitality, and presence. It preserves the fleeting nature of the moment and makes the process of creation visible.
The exhibition invites viewers to understand the human body not as an ideal, but as a complex bearer of expression — as a site of experience, perception, and artistic inquiry.
Photography: Polly Rola
Moments from the opening KÖRPER by Helga Madera 29.04.2026
Figures 9, Helga Madera, 100 x 120, acrylic on canvas, 2023Crawler, Helga Madera, 150 x 150, acrylic on canvas, 2023Nude F, Helga Madera, 100 x 120, pigment and acrylic on canvas, 2023 (close up)Helga MaderaTwo Some, Helga Madera, 80 x 120, acrylic on canvas, 2023Ob-Acht, Helga Madera, 100 x 120, acrylic on canvas, 2023Nude F, Helga Madera, 100 x 120, pigment and acrylic on canvas, 2023Carry, Helga Madera, 150 x 45, pigment and acrylic on canvas, 2023