Gesine Kikol

Visual Artist. Painting. Based in Düsseldorf.

Also this year we would like to send you the best wishes and seasons greetings by pointing out a contribution from the field of art and culture that is close to our hearts.

Gesine Kikol is a visual artist from childhood, who undertakes the path of art as an extreme focus on by own view on dynamics of contents, research journeys in search of subjective, new perspectives beyond a public truth or the idea of decoration. She follows this path in phases. During her studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Jörg Immendorff, she internalized this constant challenge of art, of her own voice. She deals provocatively with the great themes of love, lust, death and transience in a distinctive way.

Deep in the Woods, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

Gesine Kikol in her studio

Gesine Kikol studied fine art / painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. She completed her studies in 2006 as a master student of Jörg Immendorff with the academy diploma. She was a guest student of A.R. Penck and Daniel Richter at the UdK Berlin.

Since 2008 she has worked as a lecturer in painting at various universities, including from 2013 to 2015 in the orientation department of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and since 2014 at the University of Cologne.

In this challenging Corona year, Gesine was nevertheless able to realize numerous exhibitions, including International Women's Day at Schloss Eulenbroich in Rösrath, a gallery in Frankfurt, an art association in Graz, the Biennale Austria in Venice and the KUMA Art Museum in Seoul.

Also in teaching painting as a lecturer at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Uni Köln she encourages her students to add not only beauty but also ugliness to their works, to allow destruction in the construction of art.

In her current lectures, she addresses how the Corona situation affects students and the art world, and how the wave of increasing digitalization with its online exhibitions, viewing rooms, the metaverse, and the hype around NFTs is revolutionizing the art world.

In her talks such as "Extremely stupid questions to... Gesine Kikol" for the "Bundesverband Bildender Künstler" (Federal Association of Visual Artists), she also passes on her experiences to graduates and accompanies them on their way to professionalization.

In her Corona Statements Gesine describes how the arts and culture industry has been severely challenged, people have realized in the lockdown how much we all need art and culture. Art is existential and makes us the people we are...

Arttourist, Februar 2021:

In Corona exhibitions during the lockdown, such as "The situation is dynamic", works from outside were hung on the windows, they fluttered in the light wind. The vernissage took place in the open air. The artists deal creatively with the situation, so that it does not become quiet in art and culture.

Now we want to become reflective at Christmas, and move on to the phase of the huts, which deals with the view inward, the reflective element. They offer a way to travel, even if you can not travel for real.

Ivory Hut, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 cm

Artist Statement

Tree houses are one of the earliest forms of dwellings, stretch through the ages, have never lost their enormous popularity, and probably will not in the future. The tree house is a retreat, a shelter, a romantic and fairy-tale gem, a hermit's hermitage, as well as a dreamed palace or a castle in the air, in a space between fantasy and reality, in short:

a paradise on earth!

The tree house is a place for childish play, for relaxing and being enchanted, but it can also be used as an ivory tower for research and study, an ideal space for concentrated artistic work. The tree house is a symbol of various longings of people, for a peaceful place, closeness to nature, for peace and silence in a noisy and fast world, for a simple life in a complex world, for peaceful and harmonious times in a world marked by conflicts, for a counter-world with an ideal life, where you can forget everything for a short moment, a plunge into another space, between earth and sky, in Arcadia, in paradise.

Gesine Kikol, 2020

Tree House, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 cm

"The paintings are flaky, fresh and free especially in their pictorial composition and colorism. They show a programmatic openness. A second aspect is that the relationship between man and animal is rethought, experimentally from picture to picture. A third aspect is a pictorial space that is as complex as it is loose, arising from the fact that the images are first conceived in digital space and then painted - without a strictly transferred template - in analog space, spontaneously reimagined."

Prof. Dr. Robert Fleck, Professor of Art and the Public at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, June 2021

"Gesine Kikol deals in her painting with the themes of life, desire and transience, with love and death, that is, Eros and Thanatos. Both are inextricably linked and interwoven with each other, love generates life, and life includes from the beginning its own transience and approaches inexorably to death. For all its depth and seriousness, there are humorous moments, such as the scenes with squirrels, fat toads, or rabbits intensely concerned with their species preservation."

Tatjana Nicholson, Art Historian, 2021

We wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and successful New Year 2022! 2021 was probably there to push digitalization forward to create things like NFTs and VR and AI in art and economy. We thank you for your trust and are looking forward to go further steps together in the new year.

Stay safe and healthy!

With best regards

The STREMLER team and Gesine Kikol and her painted rabbits in love