Art Karlsruhe: Wendimagegn Belete | Lou Bennett | Gabriela Giroletti | Joachim Lambrechts | Martine Poppe | Richard Schur | Sinta Tantra

Wendimagegn Belete (b.1986, Ethiopia) currently lives and works between Ethiopia and Norway. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts at the AAU Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, ET in 2012. He then continued his studies with a MA in Contemporary Art at the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art and Creative Writing, Norway, graduating in 2017. Belete’s work is greatly informed by Ethiopian narratives, identity and history, and contains an encyclopaedic range of information taken from archival photos, texts, stories, video frames, and his own experiences and visual documentation. With an interest in epigenetic inheritance, the idea of a memory that transfers through generations, he encourages us to consider both our cultural and personal identities as an accumulation of past experiences, events and decisions that continue to pervade and define the present.

Lou Bennett (b. 1995) graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2017 and Slade School of Fine Art in 2021. Their painting practice draws together fragments and figures from across history to explore the intersection of personal and broader cultural histories. Through the exploration of the politics of the personal, Bennett’s project thus far is a reaction against a post-Brexit neo-colonial British government.  Having grown up in Lancaster, Bennett also seeks to redress the lack of rich representation of the north in a London-centric artworld and situates their work as part of a contemporary revival of the northern Gothic. 

Gabriela Giroletti (b. 1982) is a Brazilian painter, living and working in London. She graduated with a BA in Fine Arts (first class) from the Middlesex University, London in 2015. In 2018, she received her MFA in Painting (distinction) from the UCL, Slade School of Fine Art, where she held a position as an Honorary Research Fellow from 2019-2020. In her work, Giroletti explores the relationship between the painted image (the meaning, the immaterial, the metaphor, the mind) and the material presence in the painting (the corporeal, the touch, the physical presence, the body). Deliberately ambiguous, the paintings fluctuate between their crude materiality and their metaphysical aspect, encouraging the viewer to formulate peculiar connections with our tangible surroundings, as well as with individual and unique lived experience.

Joachim Lambrechts (b. 1986) is a renowned urban artist from Antwerp, Belgium. In 2001, he began his studies at an art school in Antwerp. Later he became very involved with the graffiti and street art scene in his home city and in 2004 he distanced himself from his academic education and left art school without graduating. In the years that followed, Joachim spent a great deal of time experimenting with various approaches to graffiti and quickly became integrated into the Belgian street art scene. Since 2010, painting on canvas has been Joachim’s main focus, in addition to creating street art across Europe. In contrast to his murals, Joachim never makes preliminary studies or sketches when he starts working on a canvas. Paradoxically, he feels freer within the four walls of his studio which is reflected in his paintings, which are the result of a more spontaneous process, and as such, possess a sense of urgency and innocence.

Martine Poppe (b. 1988, Norway) lives and works in London, Oslo and Paris. Poppe graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art with a BA and an MFA in 2011 and 2013 respectively. The artist’s source materials, which are often photographs or textiles, instigate her process of negotiating the boundaries between abstraction and representation. Poppe's paintings carry the effects of diffracted light and overexposed photography, as well as the pixilation of blown-up digital images. Sometimes she affixes the source material behind translucent fabrics on stretchers, creating a screen that she can see through and work on with paint. At other times, she tears and scrunches it up, or reshapes it as standing barriers in the exhibition space. Poppe’s works are developed from the fluidity between the different materials she employs, opening the work up for the viewer to situate themselves within the boundaries and expectations that her practice negotiates. 

Sinta Tantra (b. 1979, New York) is a British artist of Balinese descent. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, between 1999 and 2003 and later continued her studies in art at the Royal Academy Schools in London, graduating in 2006. Tantra describes herself as a painter working on an architectural scale in an abstract geometric style, exploring colour, identity and narratives while questioning the function of spaces. Tantra is highly regarded for her site-specific murals and installations in the public realm.

Richard Schur (b. 1971) studied with Jerry Zeniuk at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, and graduated as "Meisterschüler" in 2000. From 2002 to 2008, he taught painting as Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. Working as if you could hear the sound of colour, Schur creates visual experiences based on the transcendental qualities of colour. Through a long, systematic and intuitive process, he aims to reflect the meaning of every brushstroke and any detail in his compositions.