11 Questions with Anne Wölk

Anne Wölk (1982, Jena/Germany) was born and raised in former East Germany. Wölk currently lives and works in Berlin. She is a figurative painter whose artistic work stands in the tradition of realistic contemporary artists Vija Celmins and Russel Crotty.

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Committed to an attitude of reskilling, Wölk uses traditional methods and materials. Her paintings predominantly show us night sky scenes with deep and open galaxies. By quoting Spacetelescope images and digital photography resources, Anne Wölk tests the margins between art and reality. 

Parts of Wölk’s family came originally from East Prussian Königsberg, modern-day Kaliningrad. Through their cultural roots and characteristics, the artist sees herself as a wanderer between different worlds of Eastern and Western culture. During her childhood, she often came into contact with paintings by Baltic and Russian landscape painters.

With her ongoing exhibition activity in the USA and her extensive exchange of ideas with American artists, Wölk’s fantastical landscapes are characterized by a multicultural character and show German, Baltic, Russian, and American elements. 

In 2006, the young artist entered the international art world at the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair. The collector Can Elgiz bought one of her large-scale paintings for the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul. Her painting Doggirl was shown in several thematic group exhibitions next to famous artists Cindy Sherman, Tracy Emin, and Sarah Morris.

Later on, Anne Wölk received an MFA from the School of Art and Design Berlin and was a BFA student at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London.

After graduating from art school in 2009, the painter became known for beautiful large-scale landscape paintings and was selected and shortlisted for several international competitions and scholarships.

Her awards include the national Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes scholarship; the Alpine Fellowship grant at Aldourie Castle, Scotland, UK; a residency at Bodensee Art Fund; and an artist-in-residence grant in Goriska Brda, Slovenia, awarded by the German Embassy, Ljubljana. She has exhibited at international institutions, including the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul, Turkey; the CICA Art Museum South Korea; the Zeiss-Planetarium Berlin, Germany; the Accra Goethe-Institut Ghana; and the Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republik.

Wölk has exhibited her work alongside artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Johannes Wohnseifer, Azade Köker, and Stephan Balkenhol. In 2011, she was selected for the Edition S 36 of DSV Kunst Kontor, Stuttgart. The Edition S 36 was a compilation of contemporary artworks, including paintings of Jonathan Meese and Tim Eitel.

She has exhibited and sold on the international art market, including the Swab Art Fair Barcelona in Spain; Viennafair in Vienna, Austria; KIAF Seoul in South Korea; and Contemporary Istanbul in Turkey.

Wölk has since shown her work in private gallery shows, including Galería Luis Adelantado, Valencia, Spain; Arebyte Gallery, London, UK; Galerie Wolfsen, Aalborg, Denmark; Pantocrator Gallery, Shanghai, China; Alfa Gallery Miami, USA; and The Residence Gallery, London, UK.

In October 2013, Anne Wölk won the Category Award for the ArtPrize competition ‘Art Takes Paris’, judged by directors from The Andy Warhol Museum in New York, Lisson Gallery, and the Marianne Boesky Gallery. In 2017, Wölk was announced as the Showcase Juried Winner in the painting category of the 9th Artslant Prize. Her painting ‘Virtual light’ was selected by a jury consisting of Natalia Zuluaga (Artistic Director of ArtCenter/ South Florida), Nathaniel Hitchcock (co-organizer of the Bass Museum of Art) and Malose Malahela (co-founder of Keleketa! Library). Two years later, the painter participated in the finalists’ exhibition of the art competition Art Revolution in Taipei, Taiwan.

How would you define yourself as an artist?

I predominantly create fantastical landscape sceneries, and I see myself as an artist rooted in painting. The surfaces I work on are canvases and Styrofoam. My passion for space and its exploration developed at a young age. My dream of traveling to faraway planets was nurtured by reading science fiction books and seeing simulations of stellar skies at 360-degree shows at the planetarium in my hometown, Jena. 

Nowadays, I can say that the consumption of utopian novels and movies has strongly influenced my painting motifs and has shaped me as an artist. My recent artworks show extraterrestrial worlds and reflect on ideas about space colonization and terraforming. As a visual storyteller, I am fascinated by the search for life on other planets, and I try to convey my imaginations into figurative art. Inside the cosmos of painting, it is very simple to let fantasies come true. By creating starscapes, I share my desire for the intangible beauty of the universe with my audience and leave it as a gift. Sometimes that means refining the elusive sparkle of stars or depicting their infinitely deep glow with my brush, could be understood as a very personal implementation of my early childhood dream of traveling into space.

What kind of education or training helped you develop your skillset?

I started my education in the class of Ute Pleuger, a German conceptual painter with a focus on architecture. 'What you see is what you see' was the first quote I heard at art school from my professor. The statement was borrowed from the internationally renowned painter Frank Stellar and meant to convince young art students like me to follow the path of formalism and conceptual art. At that time, figurative art was banned and only accepted in the form of life drawing in undergraduate classes to develop composition skills. In these intellectual surroundings, I have learned that if I want to be a success as an artist, I have to accept that art only speaks to its audience with a clear conceptual idea. Execution in terms of the right choice of material comes second, and artistic skills like painting craftsmanship could be meaningful in the sense of understanding color and paint as material properties.

I passed the entrance exam in the painting department at the Art College Burg Giebichstein one and a half years before I made my A-level exam in high school. I think it was the result of an early career decision. At the age of 15, I already knew that I wanted nothing but to become a painter. In my freshman year, I was the youngest student, and I was always afraid of mindset manipulation and guru techniques from the dominant teacher. In my view, artists listen to the inner voice that drives them to create. My inner voice is very critical, which helps me with designing and executing new and better artworks.

From the beginning, I have received some scholarships and small awards, like the scholarship of the national Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. Winning a scholarship was a stepping stone into the indispensable support system for artists. The money allowed me to travel and educate myself. It forced me to go out of my comfort zone and exposed me to different cultures, which helped me realize how diverse our world truly is.

Three years living in Halle was enough for me, and I continued my studies in Berlin. I completed my education at the Academy of Art and Design in Berlin in 2009. 

In Berlin, as a student of Katharina Grosse, I have enjoyed the purest idea of the painting process – the synchronicity of acting and thinking. In her class, I naturally came into contact with the concept that a painting can land on any surface. An Exchange semester in a sculpture class at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London had a powerful influence on me and guided my work in entirely new directions. In London, I gained a better understanding of volume and negative space.

Today, I have learned a lot from the monochromatic night sky drawings of the American artist Vija Celmins. I find her quiet and precise work to be incredibly inspiring, deep, and complex. By studying her work, I have realized that what we don't understand forces us to take a closer look. Although I have studied with professors from the western hemisphere, I still feel attracted to reskilling, discipline, and craftmanship. I see these strongly reflected in Celmin's artistic approach.

What experience in your life would you say is reflected in your works of art?

I was born in 1982 in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) on the edge of the zone of Soviet influence. Living in the shadow of the wall left only a few memories. Still, until today, I find myself enveloped in a cloud of disturbing and dark stories. My parents and grandparents cannot get over their psychological wounds caused by having their freedom restricted and being prevented from realizing their dreams. Their memories are in great contradiction to the mainstream narrative of living in the former GDR, which influenced my worldview.

I often think of my mother, who is full of anger to this day whenever she talks about her experience when visiting family members in West Germany. The government did not allow her to take me with her to make sure she had a reason to return to the GDR. Her own country treated her like a criminal and gave her a constant feeling of vulnerability. That is why my mother taught me early on what it means to be free to travel wherever you want and what opportunities this freedom opens up. She always supported my efforts to pursue an international career.

The people of my parents' generation had artworks, books, theatres, and movies to go to places in their heads. The planetarium in my hometown of Jena was rare, too, where dreaming about traveling (to the stars) was allowed and not restricted. The simulations of stellar skies and demonstrations of planetary runs were the town's main attractions and an integral part of kindergarten and school trips. During my childhood, I saw an infinite number of shows about the history of our solar system. Jena was the city where the planetarium was invented by the engineer Walther Bauersfeld by the order of Carl Zeiss. My hometown was the center for laser and optics technology in the former GDR. Until 1990, the presentations were under the control of Soviet influence and were sometimes used as a vehicle for heroic Russian space race propaganda. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the planetarium's presentations integrated more and more images depicting the viewers' emotional intelligence. They focused on the wonder of our visible and currently known universe in their science program for children and young adults.

In the present time, inspired by these early experiences, I find my motifs by using photographs of telescopes. More precisely, that means that I translate photographic material from the Hubble Space Telescope and Europe's CHEOPS satellite into paintings. The enthusiasm with which people search for life in space stimulates my studio work and is part of the underlying mood in my visual worlds.

Nocturnal landscapes, nature, architecture, and especially LED-lights are found in most of your work. Could you tell us about the symbology behind your interpretation?

Art, in its purest sense, is an attempt to construct a parallel world with different horizons of opportunity. The focus of my artistic research is the process of recreation of reality. My working method is characterized by the employment of collage techniques and the layering of landscapes with juxtaposed objects and playing with light. In this sense, I try to bring forward a fantastical interpretation of the current and future possibilities of civilized environments grounded in scientific discoveries.

The motifs are inspired by telescopic observations and illustrate a world of extraterritorial views. My nocturnal landscapes combine pop-sci-fi visual references, such as space stations or LED light beams. The use of light is meant to carry properties similar to street lights from digital advertising and the eerie reality of our worlds being monitored and guided by forces larger than us. My paintings bring forth recurring questions: What will our habitation look like on other planets? Will we continue to embrace our technological advances in space? Will our future be a utopia or dystopia? 

Architectural elements are included in my compositions when dealing with the futuristic designs of the Bauhaus-related VKhUTEMAS movement. In general, I adore the union of the artistic and technical vision of the Russian Avant-Garde. In 2015, a comprehensive and extensive exhibition was held at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. I saw many detailed architectural drawings of future city ideas and space colonies next to the historical background information of Russian Avant-Garde Futurism.

Where did you get your inspiration from? What sources did you use?

Next to historical art influences, many international futuristic and utopian novels have strongly influenced my painting motifs and artistic research. As a teenager, I have read science fiction novels such as Return from the Stars by Stanisław Lem and Roadside Picnic by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Since then, I have read tons of science fiction novels with completely different cultural backgrounds. For that reason, I have a vast collection of books, which I have built upon the two first novels I have mentioned previously.

One of my favorite novels, which addresses the main points of my subject matter, is Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson. Gibson predicted cyberspace, which is structured similarly to our Internet. But in contrast to today's flat monitor experience, cyberspace can be accessed as a location. The idea of traveling to the stars via augmented reality is of great interest to me in the same way as a structured space composition in paintings. I am currently reading Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The novel addresses the big themes of space colonization, gods, messiahs, and artificial intelligence.

The search for life in space was, for a long time, science fiction. But the fast evolution of computer and lens technologies have allowed this to become a reality. Astronomers have discovered more than 2,500 other stars with planets orbiting them in the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system is just one specific planetary system consisting of a star with planets orbiting around it. On January 6, 2020, NASA reported TOI 700 d, the first Earth-sized exoplanet in the TESS's habitable zone. The exoplanet orbits the star TOI 700, 100 light-years away in the Dorado constellation.

Your work explores futuristic science and technology, which we have only become familiar with from the advances of satellites and cameras, and in cinematography and computer-generated images. How do you progress from sketching your ideas to presenting a final project? What gives your work such a unique expression?

Nebulae, which are formed from interstellar clouds of dust, hydrogen, and helium, are a great source of inspiration for me. They are symbols of aesthetic contemplation – of pure and true beauty in nature. By quoting details from photographs made by a machine, like the Hubble Telescope, I experience a constant need to close the technical gaps of information in the machine-made image with something real, like material paint. In this sense, I develop my craft by layering photo-realistic details on top of a loosely abstract layer of flowing color. My painting motives are in a constant shift between abstraction and realism. I develop my composition from drawings and a vast collection of astronomical photography and film stills from science-fiction movies.

What do you see as the strengths of your pieces, visually or conceptually?

Conceptual thinking and a commitment to painting craftsmanship are the main strengths of my artistic approach.

My artworks should get stuck in the head. By that, I mean, a painting has to be more than "only" technically perfect. It should own something special like an independent sole, that is difficult to put into words, but that only turns art into "art." My motives are magical and somehow crazy in their way, like the landscapes in dreams and opposing associate terms such as bright and quiet, attractive, and a little scary.

Through my cultural roots, I experience myself as a part of two different worlds, having both Eastern and Western cultural influences. My recent body of work is the culmination of a long year of search for my painting language. During my childhood, I often came into contact with paintings by East-European and Russian landscape painters. My grandfather was the first person to promote my interest in drawing. He taught me basic rules for studying nature and understanding proportions. He came from the East-Prussian Königsberg, modern-day Kaliningrad. After World War II, he was banned from his home city for his lifetime. He spoke Russian fluently and told endless stories about Kaliningrad and the great displacement. I remember him as an ambitious draftsman. During my early childhood, he influenced me with his drawings and portraits full of Baltic Romanticism and melancholy. His Refugee Traumata still influences the cosmos of my paintings. Although I belong to a different time and generation, the Baltic melancholy has inscribed itself into my artworks, like a different melody. 

Is there a piece you consider a 'breakthrough' in your work, in terms of approach or subject matter?

My painting Doggirl (2006) was the first artwork of mine that was purchased by a museum. At that time, it represented a kind of breakthrough for me. I took my first steps into the international art world. A Berlin-based gallery showed two of my artworks at the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair. On this occasion, the collector Can Elgiz bought one of my large scale paintings for the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul. It was one of these rare lucky moments during an artist's career. It happened when I was a completely unknown 24-year-old student from a little-recognized East German art college with no degree at the time. The purchased painting was shown in several thematic group exhibitions next to artwork by famous artists Cindy Sherman, Tracey Emin, and Sarah Morris. Later on, a museum assistant told me that the museum staff and curator simply liked the artwork's figuration and paint handling. That was the main reason they had included it in various art shows.

Another important artwork for me was my first 3-dimensional painting on a styrofoam sphere in 2019. It is titled Second Earth and was first shown last year at my solo show Astral, at tête gallery space in Berlin. The work is a 40cm styrofoam sphere coated in a galaxy of acrylic paints. The cool blue palette presents a mountain-scape paired with a deep night sky above. Reminiscent of a snow globe, Second Earth offers an icy view of a melancholic landscape and refers to the theme' life beyond earth,' showing a territory many light-years away. It is conceptually inspired by scientific investigations of new colonies on life-friendly planets. It addresses the power structure of who will have access to a potential planet B. The sphere was just the beginning of a new artwork series consisting of seven spheres, referring to a planetary system.

How do you see the project evolving in the next five years? Are you excited or scared of the future?

Honestly, right now, I am more scared than optimistic. In the mid-2020, the art community still finds itself in an exceptional and very unusual situation. I see and hear about the ongoing collapse of the gallery system and nonprofit institutions. Endless journalists, curators, and gallery owners play mandatory roles as the so-called support system of artists. I pray every day that as many people as possible survive this crisis.

For my future, I hope I can become even closer to my work. Fewer distractions by cultural events can probably lend to a more focused time in my studio. As we artists adjust to the new normal, we are all finding alternate ways to make the most of our time. Nevertheless, I prefer to work on concrete projects than focus on potential opportunities.

I am very excited about my next project, which is the creation of a series of painted styrofoam spheres. The idea was born in 2019 with my artwork Second Earth. It started as an experiment and will expand into a site-specific installation consisting of seven pieces. The spheres should represent a planet system and bring forth a body of work that grew from exploring territories of potential utopia in outer space. The three-dimensional paintings refer to possibly habitable exoplanets in the red dwarf system of TRAPPIST-1. The star TRAPPIST-1 was first discovered in 1999 by astronomer John Gizis. Since then, astronomers found out that the system has seven planets. Three of these planets are in the theoretical 'habitable zone,' the area around a star where rocky planets are most likely to hold liquid water.

Over the years, I have learned that time management and a long-term strategy is essential for a sustainable art career. When I step back and look at the bigger picture, I can tell you that I'm working on a 6-month, 2-year, and 5-year plan. My 6-month goal is to paint for my upcoming exhibition projects until the end of the year. That means that my two-year goal is to produce enough consistent work to fill a new solo exhibition. I am also planning the creation of a dome with canvas works included, but now, this seems to be more of a five-year project.

Any shows, galleries, or publications where our readers can find your work?

Raúl Alvaro from Pantocrator Gallery invited me to present some of my recent paintings at the Swab Art Fair 2020 in October. The Art Fair will be held online because of the coronavirus pandemic. The virtual tour will be online from 1 to October 15 on their homepage: https://swab.es

On November 13, my painting 'Virtual Light' (2017) will be part of the Rotary Charity Auction in Munich. I am happy when the artwork finds its new home at an art collector's house and, of course, when my art raises money to help other people.

In December, I am looking forward to my first solo exhibition at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA Art Museum) in South Korea. The artworks of the show will be documented in the CICA Art Now 2020 publication, which will be released in January 2021.

There are many galleries and nonprofit art centers that try to help artists by organizing online events. I currently take part in several online exhibitions, such as Booth 07 at the Alfa Gallery (Miami, Florida, USA) and the Engravist Printmaking Bienal (Istanbul, Turkey). The ongoing support touches me for my galleries and the online engagement from my audience.

You can learn more about upcoming projects and new works on my Instagram and on my homepage.

Anne, can I visit your studio?

I would love for you to visit my studio. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to see new works, and I will show you my process in the workroom.

At the beginning of August, I will move into a bigger space in a different district in Berlin. It is located in a brand-new studio house for visual artists at Gehringstrasse 39 in Berlin Weissensee. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to paint in an affordable and substituted workspace. The studio belongs to The Studio Office of the Kulturwerk of the BBK. It allows me to develop my work further even in times of crisis as we are now experiencing the coronavirus pandemic. The Studio Office has made a long-term commitment to securing places for the artistic production of visual art in Berlin.

Anne Wölk | Artist Statement

Nebulae, which are formed from interstellar clouds of dust, hydrogen, and helium, are a great source of inspiration for me. They are symbols of aesthetic contemplation – of pure and true beauty in nature.

As a child, I saw countless simulations of stellar skies and demonstrations of planetary runs at 360-degree shows at the planetarium in my hometown Jena. Jena was the center for laser and optics technology in the former GDR. These formative experiences continually influenced my interest in science fiction and space travel.

The subject matter of my paintings speaks through the imagery of futuristic science and technology, which we have only become familiar with because of the advances in satellites, cameras, cinematography, and computer-generated images. As a citizen of the society of digital culture, I alter astrophotographic pictures and photos from the Hubble Space Telescope and integrate them into my motifs and my painting cosmos.

I layer content from these diverse sources in a fantastic interpretation of nature in which the simultaneity of Romanticism and Utopia becomes perceptible.

In this context, my work explores the relationship between art and science.

As a millennial artist, I also continually remix elements of popular culture and painting history in the form of the artistically analogous acts of appropriation and collaging. In this sense, the process of layering, e.g., outer space images with quotations from German Romanticism and Photorealism, mainly characterizes my painting composition strategy. 

Dreamlike artificial light floats in the picture space lead to the emptiness of a virtual vacuum. Starry night skies, modified by photoshop filters, are in contrast to a rainbow color scale. 

Besides my nocturnal landscapes, I combine pop-sci-fi visual references, such as space stations or LED light beams. My conceptional use of lighted colors is what makes my representational artworks very contemporary. By creating space with flowing color gradients and sampling methods, I want to reclose photographic aberrations, digital information gaps, and compression artifacts caused by the technical limitations of telescopic observations and mechanical photography. 

I try to translate with human warmth, the beauty, and grandeur of the cold, empty, and hostile universe on painted canvas. For that reason, I intend to preserve the Millenium worldview visions for future generations.