The artists and art pieces shown at insitu are invited into a dialogue with Hellmich’s artistic practice as well as each other. Their display not only offers keys to understanding Hellmich’s practice, but Hellmich creates an intervention that interweaves the work of her idols with her own. She takes a self-reflexive approach - exhibiting drawings of what she imagined the exhibition to look like, as well as photocopies of catalogues by artists she admires. Furthermore she responds to other artist works through reproductions or self-built installations in which to display them.

Helene Hellmich decided to deviate from the given framework Meet your Idol by erasing the hierarchical meaning implied within the questions of “What is an idol?” and “What kind of relationship do I have with my idol?”. First, by proposing a long list of fellow artists, she denies the status of an idol, often understood as exclusive and beyond reach. Then, the deliberate integration of the works of the guest artists (her supposed idols) into a global installation, clearly demonstrates that the relationships she maintains toward those artists is far from any kind of devotion.

With this exhibition, Helene Hellmich offers us the opportunity to observe how artists integrate others’ practices into their own. How specific encounters, physical or intellectual, through education or special occurrences, can have an impact on the development of an artistic career and on some essential decisions.

Text by insitu