Thomas Helbig’s paintings approach abstraction with a quirky intimacy. Set in wonky hand-made frames, his canvases exude a contemplative authority, broaching high culture with folk craft. Reminiscent of the black forms of Robert Motherwell or Franz Kline, Maschine resurrects modernist principles of artistic autonomy, creating a unique platform in which Helbig engages with art and history in a personal way. Expressionistically rendered in chalky tones, Maschine manifests a corrupted aesthetic; his clunky form enshrined in a muddy painterly field alludes to a defunct beauty, its unresolved composition encapsulating the poetic failure of ideas.Thomas Helbig’s abstractions strive to capture the essence of power. Within his raw canvases, Helbig alludes to the unwieldy forces of nature, and the representational modes used to harness its vastness. Stylistically, Helbig recycles art history, implicating visual language as reflective of ideology: from the political subtexts of abstraction, to the religious spiritualism of romanticism. In Seele, Helbig creates a field of high drama, his blacks and blues churning with the unpredictable depth of night. Reminiscent of Turner’s climactic impressionism, Helbig’s Seele suggests both haunting landscape and stormy psychology.

Thomas Helbig’s Jung Frau offers a morbid fascination. Using the textural contrasts of materials, Helbig creates a biomorphic abstraction veering between charred and fossilised remain and science fiction species. Embedding smooth moulded forms in rough globular material, Jung Frau possesses a tactile physicality at odds with itself: fragile and brutal, elevated and primitive. Coated in high gloss black paint, Helbig’s sculpture is both sinister and humorous, suggesting apocalyptic narratives that are glamorous and abject.At first glance Thomas Helbig’s sculptures appear to be futuristic ruins; bizarre and broken finds hinting at some remote gothic civilisation, glorifying its defunct authority. In fact they are made from contemporary debris, objects and knickknacks found in dustbins and flea markets. Helbig’s studio is a laboratory of invention where the discarded ephemera of daily life is broken and reassembled with construction materials to create totems of fictional power. Through this process of abstraction, Helbig poses formal solutions as literary escapism, drawing a timeless mythology from the everyday. Taking both barbaric and poetic form, Vater exudes a romantic supremacy, creating an alien parallel to known history.