in vitro. Ilka Helmig – Speculative Growth.

July 27th – August 31st, 2024, can be viewed from the outside all day.
Opening: Saturday, July 27th, 2024, 4-7 p.m.
Finissage and catalog release Saturday, August 31, 2024, 4-7 p.m.
Location: Glass pavilion in Grugapark – Glass pavilion on Google Maps

We warmly invite you to the exhibition opening on Saturday, July 27, 2024, 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Introduction by the curator Dr. Sabine Kampmann, followed by Artist Talk with Ilka Helmig. The exhibition runs until August 31, 2024 and can be viewed from the outside all day. Additional exhibition with Ilka Helmig in the Obrist Gallery, Collectors Lounge. Finissage in the glass pavilion Sunday, August 31, 2024, 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. The exhibition takes place in the glass pavilion of Grugapark Essen.
Exhibition series in vitro – art in the glass pavilion.

In her works, Ilka Helmig deals with visual aspects of scientific findings and transforms them into visual works. In her work “Speculative Growth” in the Grugapark glass pavilion, she examines the structure and structure of biological growth. For this she has developed a reverse glass painting that covers the entire room in floral-like motifs. The forms developed freely and organically in the course of the creative process; there was no preliminary drawing: at some point the forms began, from here the forms developed and at another point they ended, without really setting an end point here. Because unlimited growth and proliferation of painting is easily conceivable until every last piece of glass is covered with paint and a neutral and unmoving state is reached again. Ilka Helmig shows us an arbitrarily set intermediate stage of the growth process as a symbol for the development curve of all biological life forms.

Ilka Helmig
studied fine art and visual communication at the Technical University of Nuremberg and the Alanus University in Bonn. She lives and works in Cologne and Paris. Since 2007 she has been a professor of drawing and visual conception at the FH Aachen. In her art she uses the media of drawing, photography, analogue and digital image creation, which she often combines in large-scale installations.