Salomé Berger

The paintings of Düsseldorf-based painter Salomé Berger (*1990 in Bern) transport the viewer into fantastic, surreal worlds. In her works, body fragments such as arms and torsos merge with seemingly paradisiacal leaves and flowers, which either serve as the origin of young shoots or merge completely into new plants.

The artist creates these sculptural forms in front of backgrounds that also consist of fragments - whether in the form of landscape scenes or abstract color surfaces. This complexity is particularly evident in her “New Places” series, which she has been creating since 2020. In small formats (40 x 30 cm), the pictures show two parallel picture planes: a landscape representation and sharply contoured strips and areas of color that appear to have been cut out. The abstract colour sections often conceal the plant motifs, with the earliest “New Places” paintings even showing full-format, idealized landscapes that are only interrupted by individual “cracks”. Playing with concealment and revelation, directing the gaze - all of this runs through the artist's entire oeuvre.

Over the course of time, Salomé Berger has developed her own visual language. She creates an aesthetic of artifice through the intense colors, which are characterized by heightened body poses - a reference to her earlier training as a dancer - as well as by the unnatural-looking forms of tropical plants. This reflects the staging of the representation and opens up a separate, artistic space beyond reality. Her pictures focus on moments of tension. Supporting structures that reach their breaking point serve as core for something new shortly before they dissolve.