For his first exhibition at Vilma Gold Helbig will exhibit a new series of drawings, paintings and sculptures. With references to the Russian Avantgarde and Surrealist practices, Helbig seems to engage with, and subvert, the languages of modernism they encompass. This is perhaps most apparent in Helbig’s overpaintings of found paintings and wall decorations. He has described the effect this has as ‘discovering something through conceal- ment’ or ‘making something visible through encryption.’ Often, through this process of reworking, forms are organically revealed so that a process of transmogrification takes place. In other works, found portraits have had their faces blackened and smeared by paint, with the saturation of the canvas seemingly having occurred with such violence that the drips left by the application of paint fall all the way down to the frame. The sug- gestion of gravity, through the way material has been applied, is rarely a quality the forms in his paintings are burdened by. Mostly the picture plain has a weightless quality as objects hover, suspended as if by extraneous forces. For Helbig the concept of suspension is closely connected to the Baroque and the way dramatic use of light and illusory effects like trompe l’oeil are used in the churches of Helbig’s native Upper Bavaria to create greater spiritual affinity.

Helbig’s paintings and sculptures are often borne out of earlier drawings. Torn from the pages of his sketch- book, his drawings appear to have a spiritual affinity to Surrealist automatic drawings and contain rapid flecks of colour, ominous shapes and faint references to mythological icons through the use of form and symbolism. In Helbig’s sculptures paint, resin and polyurethrane cover partially destroyed statue heads, tree roots and an array of thrift shop and castaway objects that have been dissolved, flattened and broken down to forms barely recognisable of the structures they once were. Coagulated and yet perceivably mutable Helbig’s sculptures seem to have a life force of their own, watching over the gallery space they act as arresting punctuation from the contemplative reverie that Helbig’s paintings invoke.

Thomas Helbig was born in Rosenheim in 1967 and lives and works in Berlin. In 2007 he had a solo show
at Oldenburg Kunstverein and has participated in group shows at Kai 10 Raum für Kunst, Düsseldorf (2008), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing (2008), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2008), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2008), ZKM, Karlsruhe (2007), Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2007), Tate Modern, London (2007), Goetz Collection, Munich (2006) and Oldenburger Kunstverein (2003). Helbig is currently participating in the exhibition ‘Underclass Atavism’ at Gentili Projects, Prato, curated by Veit Loers.