Helene Appel: Un jour

Semiose gallery launches its new collaboration with the German painter Helene Appel with her first exhibition in France.

Since the mid-2000s, Helene Appel has been painting, with consummate skill and the greatest possible fidelity, all kinds of subjects – large and small, beautiful and ugly, organic and inorganic. She makes the things she paints present at life-size on raw linen canvas, matching the format and technique of each work to its subject.

Shunning no triviality, her painting offers a vision stripped back to the bare essentials, far removed from any moral or metaphysical interpretation. The stark truth of fragile, everyday objects is captured with unflinching realism, seizing the perfection of a moment. Unlike trompe-l’œil, which seeks to deceive, her work instead invites the eye to explore the inherent aesthetic qualities of her chosen motifs, which might be, in turn, an envelope, a car headlight, a drain cover or soapy water.

The apparent simplicity of bringing such objects to life through painting opens up a profound exploration of the relationship between art and reality. Or, to put it briefly: “What you see is what you get… but take a closer look at what you see.” The aim is not merely to represent reality, but to produce it.