Overview
Kestner Gesellschaft presents the first institutional solo exhibition of British artist Ella Walker.
Within the intersection of medieval and contemporary spaces, Ella Walker moves freely, interchanging histories with invented scenes that are both referential and dream-like. By creating imagery that merges art historical iconography from the Trecento and Renaissance periods, theatrical sets and stock characters from Commedia dell'Arte, contemporary ballet, and costume design inspired by 1960s cinematic scenes and fashion magazines, Walker translates ritual into innovation, refitting old narratives into contemporary plots of unfolding tragedy, comedy, and love.
Kestner Gesellschaft presents the first institutional solo exhibition of British artist Ella Walker.
Within the intersection of medieval and contemporary spaces, Ella Walker moves freely, interchanging histories with invented scenes that are both referential and dream-like. By creating imagery that merges art historical iconography from the Trecento and Renaissance periods, theatrical sets and stock characters from Commedia dell'Arte, contemporary ballet, and costume design inspired by 1960s cinematic scenes and fashion magazines, Walker translates ritual into innovation, refitting old narratives into contemporary plots of unfolding tragedy, comedy, and love.
The resulting meeting challenges viewers’ understanding of the sacred and profane, while simultaneously encouraging the rethinking of binaries of old and new, high and low culture. Walker combines painting and drawing (using a vast array of mediums including tempera, gesso, pastel, and ink) to create shallow, stage-like depths of field and interspersing planes of color that usurp holistic understandings of structure and composition.
