...Ellen Semen's pictures build on this dialectic of innocence and horror. They juxtapose the harmless with the horrific, seemingly without comment. Alienation in the form of artificial manga figures designed according to market economy criteria is juxtaposed with direct realism in the form of collaged or realistically reproduced images from photo reportages.
The starting point is semantically strongly coded signs, which in turn are combined in an alienated way and placed in absurd contexts. The collaged figure from a magazine stands on an equal footing with botanical representations and free painterly compositions that create new units from the set pieces. Unexpectedly, the incomprehensible, which defies all logic, creeps into everyday perception and undermines everything that appears clear, beautiful and normal on the surface. The artificial staging suddenly tips over into the terrible, the naive into the catastrophic.
...It is a completely artificial world that leads back to the real in a frighteningly direct way. Apparent naivety turns out to be extreme sophistication.
Evil lurks in the flower - "O Rose, thou art sick", as William Blake already knew.