*Phönix II,* 2022, Collage, 42 x 56 cm, Rahmen 60 x 80 cm

Tatjana Schülke

Tatjana Schülke has made bas-relief wall hangings and sculptures out of industrial and household materials, as well as found objects, transforming them into her personal motifs of artistic expression. Schülke uses unusual materials such as cardboard honeycomb sheets, tubes, toothpicks, fireworks, yard sticks, mops, styrofoam and aged wood panels in making her sculptures. Her curiosity and understanding of materials and her pursuit of expression of given concepts are laid out playfully and aesthetically and mostly in monochromatic tones. On closer view, one can detect the artist´s concerns regarding gender issues, expressions of tension and interplay oscillating between two poles of ideas: visible and invisible, inner and outer, vulnerability and aggression, as well as chaos and order. The artist’s central concern, the transformation of functional utilitarian materials into unique and artistically defamiliarized objects, can be readily seen in the work “Don’t touch me, 2014.”