Lena Grewenig:
Between Touch and Transformation
It often doesn’t begin with an idea, but with a feeling. When Lena Grewenig speaks about her childhood, she doesn’t describe a starting point, but something that had always been there. Drawing was simply part of everyday life. She created her own newspaper about her village, conducted interviews, with real and imagined people and placed the finished pages on the kitchen table in the morning.
It was never about showing something.
But about understanding something.
From Drawing to Thinking
Born in 1988 in Bassum, Grewenig now lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. Her studies in Kassel and later at the Städelschule changed the way she approached her own work. What once happened intuitively suddenly had to be described. Language became important. So did conversation.
Drawing became a form of thinking.
Closeness Through Observation
When she began drawing faces, something shifted. Lines, folds and transitions moved into focus. The more closely she observed, the closer she came to the people she was drawing. Drawing became a form of approach.
Today, the body stands at the centre of many of her works — not as an image, but as something that stores experience. Posture, movement or tension often reveal more than words.
Between Painting and Jewellery
Her practice moves between painting and jewellery. While painting allows space for thoughts and observation, jewellery enters into a direct relationship with the body. It changes how we appear and how we are perceived.
Both mediums emerge from similar processes. New works rarely begin with a clear idea. Often, it is an impression, a mood or a material that triggers a new thought.
Making Transitions Visible
Grewenig is interested in transitions — in states that are not yet fixed. In moments when something changes without immediately becoming visible.
Exchange plays an important role in this process. Work often emerges in silence, but evolves through dialogue with other artists, with audiences, or within the context of social themes.
What drives her practice is curiosity.
Not arrival, but movement.
