Interview with Hélène Muheim

Hélène Muheim proposes new representations and perceptions of the landscape, made with eyes powders as evanescent as her drawings are mysterious. Peaceful clouds and voluptuous valleys at a distance, they are transformed closely into myriads of details. The artist plays with scales, deploying the excessively large and the infinitely small at the same time, as if to better create a form of ambiguity between the representation of the landscape and its ephemeral dimension, a crack in the blank page, a portal to the imaginary. Her fantastic ecosystems and topographies invite us to meditate on the power of nature, but also on its fragility. The latter is also highlighted by the delicacy of her technique, using ink and graphite but also, more surprisingly, eyeshadows. Used in a similar way to photographic colorization, pastel colors bring a fragile side to this homage to nature, also giving it a romantic air conducive to reverie. Hélène Muheim creates views without front nor back, multiplying the layers of memories and embracing the flaws of memory. The traces of distant crossings and recent climbs mingle with references to the history of art. The artist thus transforms panoramic views into a proposal for an inner journey, relating to both personal experience and the collective unconscious. The roots intertwine, the clouds merge into foliage, the forests become one and we lose all references in the face of these mirages, infinite loops, paths without directions, and horizons without edges. Each work evokes other images, and the observer finds themselves caught in these mazes of pareidolia.

Courtesy of the artist & galerie Valerie Delaunay, Paris