In her first solo exhibition in Schaan, Karen Holländer is showing very recent works. These are predominantly based in the genre of still life: "My focus is on the depiction of everyday objects, which can also be seen as metaphors for certain circumstances of human existence."
In doing so, Holländer falls back on recurring themes: the entanglements, the "weed", the "unstable" and the illusion.
Most of the artist's floral still lifes are based on one and the same kind of plant, namely the "weed" on the corner. Karen Holländer describes herself as a notorious collector of the inconspicuous: "In the course of last summer, on my walks through the city, I made friends with all these plants commonly referred to as "weeds", whose growth involuntarily establishes itself in cracks in walls, on kerbs or between floor slabs, i.e. in the most impossible and shabby locations, in order to stubbornly and impressively unfold their green-leaved beauty there, crowned by one or more long-stemmed flowers." This predominantly disregarded plant is now portrayed in a painterly way, enlarged and brought to the wall, ennobled and ennobled. Karen Holländer is a great storyteller, an illusionist, a painter who subtly displays the surreal reference and wit in her paintings.
For what at first glance appears to be a perfectly rendered pansy turns out to be a structure with an overlong stem, a stem that becomes entangled and lies tangled on the ground just like a garden hose, and whose end manifests itself in the shadow of the flower. Shadow and flower are one, connected by green entanglements. In earlier paintings, Holländer called these symbioses "liaisons". A romantically transfigured view of the inseparable - but infinitely tangled - bond.
Can this blossom physically stand up straight or should it not hang its head a little due to gravity? Can this jug on the tabletop hold up at all, or are we mentally witnessing an unintentional accident triggered by the broken table legs? What is the function of a staple when it is bent and suddenly takes on the shape of a chair: can we sit on it, or do we once again become visual victims of a spatial illusion?
It is these everyday objects that Karen Holländer always has in her sights and with which she populates her pictures. They are fantastically beautiful works, full of sophistication and stories, and not at all infrequently they leave questions unanswered that do not inevitably belong answered, for the beauty and effect would not be countered by the answer. The answer to why four discarded gutters ooze colour - yellow, green, blue and pink - what would it give us? Nothing! Because the pictures are perfect enough as it is!
