Characteristics and vita
Ellen Semen, born in Hamburg in 1971, unfolds her artistic voice with an intensity and passion that both captivates and challenges the viewer. Her journey began at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, where she studied from 1993 to 2001. Under the guidance of Peter Chevalier, she immersed herself in the world of painting, while she later explored the complex techniques of intermedia design with Sotorius Michou. However, her search for artistic knowledge took her far beyond the borders of Germany: in 1998 to the Surikov Institute in Moscow and in 1999 to the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille.
Her works and talent were recognized early on. In 1999, she was awarded the Academy Prize for Painting at the Stuttgart Art Academy, followed by a scholarship in Marseille as part of the Franco-German Youth Office. A year earlier, another important scholarship had already taken her to Moscow, sponsored by Künstlerwege e.V.
The painter and draftswoman with Croatian roots transports us into images of longing for a conflict-free world. But beware: the superficially alluring painting always conceals an unadorned reality in which unexpected pictorial elements enter the room and put the viewer to the test. The supposedly beautiful and innocent is undermined by the surprising and unpleasant. Harmlessness mingles with horror. And yet the rich, luminous tones, which leave a positive and optimistic impression, reconcile the viewer. Ellen Semen herself says: "My works are designed to be dark, but light is desired. That's why my images of longing stand for a conflict-free world."
Semen's works are deeply rooted in the critical questioning of the major issues of our time, supported by skilled craftsmanship. She does not bow to the conventions of the art market, but instead provokes with her figurative painting, raises her artistic voice with expressiveness and does not speak in a roundabout manner, but with a refreshing sharpness and clarity.
Since 1996, her works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Since 2020, she has been represented by the BURN-IN Gallery, which makes her work accessible to an even wider public.
Ellen Semen, an artist whose works are both reflection and rebellion, manages to captivate and challenge us with every brush-stroke and pixel. Her art is a constant dialogue between past and future, a dance between the analogue and the digital - and always an invitation to question our own reality and discover new, hybrid art experiences.
Semen has lived and worked in Vienna for 20 years.
Exhibitions
Philosophy
Ellen Semen's painting penetrates the seemingly insurmountable boundaries between reality and fiction, like a border crosser who shatters the obvious to reveal the layers beneath. Her unbroken desire for a regressive correction of found reality proves to be a strategic constant in her art. With every brushstroke, every digital manipulation, she poses the essential question of what is true and what is only sold to us as truth.
Her works are not simple representations, but complex ciphers that bring the unconscious, the utopia of nothingness, to the fore. In a world increasingly characterized by the capriciousness of consumerism, Semen challenges us to look beyond the surface. Her art plays with concepts of security and its destruction, a dichotomy that both attracts and repels. She exposes the attractive capacity of a product as described by Karl Marx - commodity fetishism - and transforms it into a metaphor for modern existence.
Semen does not provoke for the sake of provocation. Her works are attacks on the conventions of the art market, an outcry against the smooth, conformist aesthetics that surround us every day. She confronts us with images that depict both the horror scenarios of everyday life and the chaotic beauty of human existence. Her figures and scenarios, often inspired by computer and animated games, present a reductio ad absurdum of postmodern culture and expose its underlying violence and chaos.
The sober luminosity of her paintings resonates with an enlightenment that leads us into an absurd universe through polished surfaces and garish glossy reflections. Semen's painting is a fictitious, explicitly staged space where humor and horror meet in a delicate balancing act. Her works are more than just visual experiences; they are complex dialogues that bring iconographic signs of the computer age into a new, meaningful contextualization.
In a world characterized by warlike conjunctions and cultural paralysis, Semen's works represent a riot of signs, mixing the morbid tastes of death with the spectacular. Her images are media criticism in its purest form, cautioning of a society ready for war and ubiquitous mobilization. Her artistic language creates a fluid war continuum that intertwines athletic fitness, economic careerism and a culture of fear.
Semen's works depict sexually attractive manga characters and Pokemons that, like in Japanese animated films, take up the ghost in the machine. Her art reflects the horror vision of the merging of man and machine, as already thematized in the cult film "Blade Runner" of the 1980s. In her art, the human subject loses itself in the flow of information, becoming an impulse of time and movement, a boundless art of being.
The transformation of innocent protagonists into battle-ready machines, as in the film "Ghost in the Shell", is also reflected in Semen's paintings. These transformations reflect the dialectical tension between conquest and dispossession and make her works a profound analysis of the human psyche and social reality. Through the permutation of her images and the skillful use of signs and media, Ellen Semen succeeds in creating a multi-layered yet poignant artistic vision that forces us to see the world with new eyes.
Statement
Ellen Semen, a painter and draftswoman with Croatian roots, surprises again and again with pictures that reveal a longing for a conflict-free world, but in which violence immediately breaks in. Her ostensibly charming paintings transport the viewer into an unembellished reality in which unexpected pictorial elements enter the pictorial space and challenge it. These contrasts confront the viewer, putting them to the test, as the supposedly beautiful and innocent is infiltrated by the surprising and unpleasant. The harmless mingles with the horrific, but ultimately the rich, luminous tones reconcile and leave a positive and optimistic impression. Ellen Semen puts it in a nutshell: "My works are designed to be dark, but light is desired. They attempt to secretly inscribe the utopia of peace into the violence that actually exists."
Semen's artistic approach is well-founded and sustainable. She calls a spade a spade and dares to tackle highly sensitive subjects. She brilliantly manages to point out unpleasant truths without being destructive and always with a great deal of positivism. Her superficially immaculate and beautiful figurative paintings evoke positive associations, despite their profundity. She thus appeals above all to profound art collectors and institutions who want to be challenged by contemporary art and use it to make a special statement to their environment. BURN-IN recommends Semen's works especially for corporate collections, art interventions and art branding campaigns. Problematic structural issues that affect organizations and society can be communicated and managed credibly and authentically through her strategic artistic intervention. The return on culture as a sustainable gain in terms of internal and external communication.
BURN-IN is delighted to have represented Ellen Semen since August 2020. This was a significant upgrade to our international portfolio and we gained a loyal friend at BURN-IN. The participation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the BURN-IN ExpertsCorner at the stand of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce in fall 2023 marks another highlight of our cooperation. Ellen Semen impresses with her absolute loyalty, profound vision and combative nature. As a sensitive, seismographic storyteller, she reflects significant global conflicts in her personal, subtle way and reveals herself to be an artist of the highest relevance.