Especially in times of great insecurity, it can be helpful to look to what has always been there. That can provide the comforting reassurance that there is stability in life. Looking back can also help to provide a firmer footing in the unsteady present. The photographer Julia Baier, the ceramist Sylvie Enjalbert, and the painter Silke Leverkühne take things from the past that have proven to be enduring as the basis for the present.

In her photo series, Julia Baier retrieves inherited fur coats, which haven’t been worn in a long time. Once, they promised warmth and protection and signified wealth; today, they seem like something cumbersome from the past. Julia Baier gives them a new life. They fly, float, and transform into surprising figures that move through space with playful lightness. The perspective from above on the transforming shapes ensures concentration and reveals ever new living creatures.

When the ceramist Sylvie Enjalbert constructs her vases and vessels, she continues a long cultural history. Perhaps no other artistic genre provides as much room to explore the question of stability as does ceramics. The material appears delicate, but the forms have hardly changed over time. With Sylvie Enjalbert, it is the added details that give the timeless forms a new direction. The plain, unglazed, seemingly archaic vases stand like a prima ballerina on feet drawn upwards; bowls are eccentrically constructed and lose their statics. Lying on their side, they transition into a mobile state. They are works of art, no longer meant to be used.

Clouds unify the past and the future. They emerge, dissipate, and continuously change their appearance. The painter Silke Leverkühne finds in them an infinite source of inspiration. Clouds illuminated by the sun, dark agglomerating storm clouds, or light clouds against a blue morning sky – her painting has every freedom, and yet refers to a vis-à-vis. Abstraction and motifs maintain a charged balance. The paintings seem like emblems of a dialogue intent on autonomy.

Julia Baier (*1971) studied photography at the Bremen University of the Arts and is now working as freelance photographer and artist in Berlin. In addition to commissions for international agencies, magazines and newspapers, she works as an artist on free photographic subjects. Her work has won several awards and been shown in numerous international exhibitions. She has been a member of the international photographer collective UP Photographers since 2019.

Sylvie Enjalbert (*1973) has been regularly invited to show her artworks in Japan, South Korea, China, where she also had the opportunity to work as a resident artist. The Ariana Museum Geneva rewarded her last year for the entire work and especially for the last creations reflecting the deep connection she has with the inner self.

Silke Leverkühne (*1953) studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. From 2004-2020 she taught as a professor of painting at the University of Cologne. She lives and works in Düsseldorf. She has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Her work can be found in numerous private and public collections, including Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz, Bau- und Reaktorsicherheit, Berlin; Kunstsammlung des Landes NRW, Kornelimünster; Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren; Sammlung Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; Sammlung Bayer, Leverkusen; Sammlung der Provinzial Rheinland.

Press release courtesy Galerie Albrecht.