Oil on canvas | 4 works | 2018

EN
The surfaces that inspire Lieners’ work have been ripped off, fallen off, glued over, written on top of. They are witnesses of time, of a city, of the way we appropriate a city for ourselves and have a say in shaping it. They were designed to look a certain way and have found their own aesthetic over time. They emancipated themselves from what they were supposed to look like. They stand for hazard, autonomy, abandon, ephemerality, individuality.

Lieners captures these surfaces and transfers them to large scale canvasses. She finds inspiration in the details that look like abstract paintings already, which she paints in a figurative way to retrace our definition of both. She wants to document these places and their beauty by pointing out the contrast of a filthy surface in a public space and its translation to a painting in the noblest of techniques – oil on canvas. The series is an ironic take on what we consider suitable to be aesthetic, which visuals value in which context. What place art has in public space?

The surfaces which inspired the paintings were found during her artist residency in the summer of 2017 on her way from her flat in Bushwick to her Studio in Manhattan.