ANGELA KEHLENBECK

ARTIST STATEMENT

I choose a moment in time and let the sculpture tell its story.

The small human figures I have been working on are bodies I know, scenes I remember or imagine, that have touched and influenced my life. Working on these delicate sculptures - which are made of simple wire, tape, glue and (deliberately selected) newspaper clippings from NYT and ZEIT - is a slow process. Shaping the figure and tenderly tracing the nuances of this person's body and posture opens up new spaces of deep understanding and empathy for their story, for the fragility of human existence and its resilience.

Very personal works are created in which I deal with a part of my history, with my family, with myself or with scenes I envision – while transferring these personal stories into sculptures that, in their intriguing vividness, tell of complex human conditions such as exhaustion, withdrawal, solitude or tense concentration, of a life-defining step, a moment of weightlessness or calm clarity.

BIO

Angela Kehlenbeck (b. 1959, Hamburg, Germany) is a German artist currently living in Prague. She earned degrees from Hochschule RheinMain and from HAW in Hamburg, School of Illustration and started out her career working in Picture Book Illustration. Kehlenbeck published with renowned German and International publishers before focusing on freelance work as an artist and working as a lecturer at the Institute for Teacher Training in Bremen. Kehlenbeck has always worked in series, primarily in painting and drawing, but it was only after moving to the US in 2017 that she began to focus on the small objects that became the ‘family’ series in which she explores the layers of memory, narrative and emotion condensed in these fragile figures. In recent years Kehlenbeck‘s sculptures were exhibited in several group shows, e.g. at Equity Gallery (NY, 2023), NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY) and others. Her work has been recently included at White Columns Curated Artist Registry (NY).

NEWS

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Angela Kehlenbeck‘s work was exhibited in group exhibitions:
‘Five Points: A Convergence of Dreams’
at Equity Gallery, NY (2023)
Online exhibition SHE at http://www.art-fluent.com/she (2023)
Cultural Center of Cape Cod, MA (2023)
Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, NY (2022)
NARS Foundation in Sunset Park, Brooklyn (2022)
Chroma Projects in Charlottesville, VA (2021)

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