As The Mist Sets

June 13 - August 31, 2025

Ina Gerken belongs to a young generation of gestural abstract painters who are renegotiating the interplay of line, form and color. In her intuitive and spontaneous process, Gerken creates strangely organic-looking, highly evocative visual worlds that oscillate between wildly romantic nature and emotional landscapes. The energetic brushstrokes and dripping paint exude pure energy, everything is transient, yet a meditative calm pervades the atmosphere. "Accepting chaos, finding your own order, and trusting that a painting will emerge in the end. For me, this has a lot to do with human existence itself,” Gerken says in Kunstbar Contemporary Art on 7 May 2018. While reminiscences of Abstract Expressionism come to mind, she clearly stands out from her predecessors, remaining unique in her artistic non-conformity. The upcoming October exhibition with Helen Frankenthaler, in concert with Ina Gerken, Jenny Brosinski, and Adrian Schiess, at the Museum Reinhard Ernst in Wiesbaden, is testament to this.

Ina Gerken was born in 1987 and she lives and works in Duesseldorf, Germany. From 2014 to 2016 she studied at the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf and was a master class student of Katharina Grosse. In 2023 Gerken was awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Grant and in 2022, she was selected for the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture’s artist residency program. She has also participated in residencies with the Fores Project, UK (2021) and The Cabin LA, CA (2019), and has received grants from the Stiftung Kunstfonds, Germany (2024); Lepsien Art Foundation, Germany (2017); and the Fine Art Collective of Frankfurt, Germany (2016), among others.

Her work has been exhibited at museums and galleries in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, including Logomo, Turku, Finland (2023); Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (2023); Stiftelsen Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Vestfossen, Norway (2022); Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (2020); Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany (2020); and Bonn Museum of Modern Art, Bonn, Germany (2019), among others. Gerken’s work is held in the OP ENHEIM Collection, Poland and the collection of the Kunsthaus NRW Kornelimünster, Germany, among private collections across the globe.