Drawings and Graphical Reproductions by Désirée Wickler

Throughout the last years, Désirée Wickler has gained an excellent national and international reputation in the art world with her magnificent artwork and numerous exhibitions, showing her drawings, graphics and numerous art books. The questioning Theme of her work, remains to strive for knowledge about self-identity of Humankind, portraying primarily the female Body. In her momentum, she is issuing the matter of the human body and individual beauty, the quarreling between own rights and external requirements is a recurring subject matter in her complex and multilayering work. The ostentatious nakedness becomes a metaphor to the search of the own self, which continuously commutes between introspection and external momentum. On her search she is exploring and exposing the fascinating contradictions of the human individual. In a more general concept, she is offering the viewer the interaction between the individual and society.

The drawings seem to be quite bluntly, abrupt and rough, succeeding the demonstration of formal composition and meaningful statements: proposing undeniable harshness, but also soft and tender moments. The figures become touchingly frail and meek. Désirée Wickler manages to genuinely depict the internal conflicts of the fragile self. What strikes the beholder in the graphical reproductions and drawings are the various materials and techniques she uses effortlessly, displaying her original artistic signature.

Frequent layering in her work produces a complex altering between laconic agglomeration and fluffily constructed areas. The spectator is constantly invited to scan the haptic spirited surfaces of the drawings, achieving a more immediate interrogation of the beholder. Contemplating her Art books, it becomes evident on how many sensational levels her work operates: very personal, almost intimate situations occur while engaging with these Treasures of bookmaking art. While sedentary, her depictions become a unique interrogation, appropriate to the guidelines of the room she is working with. Light being the central motif, dependent on daytime, her work is massively under the impact of the esthetic fragment of the latter.

Désirée Wickler’s present work captives the beholder with an intensive examination of the subject matter, as well with the persistent search for the ideal esthetic body. Her artistic statement is given to the observer in empathic participation and a pinch of humorous complexity, in objection of Humankind. Her narrative crawls under our skin and will let us ponder.

Text: Steffen Neuburger, Art historian. Translation support: Anne Lind