Between visibility and disappearance

At the end of June, the artist Elvira Flamm will be exhibiting in Berlin and Barcelona at the same time: From June 20, eight works from her series Fading Life will be on display in the Group Exhibition June 2025 at LiTE-Haus in Berlin. The series, which was completed in 2022, comprises a total of 40 works and focuses on the extremely accelerated extinction of species due to human activity. The 40 paintings represent the 40,000 species listed as endangered worldwide. The animals, plants and fungi, painted lifelike in acrylic, are covered by different colored veils in the paintings. The color of the veil shows the cause, its width the degree of threat. The American burying beetle, for example, shown in the picture above, is listed as threatened with extinction due to the spread of human industry, to which Flamm assigns the color blue. Burying beetles, native to Europe, Asia and North America, are extremely valuable scavengers for ecosystems. The exhibition at the LiTE House, in which a total of 13 artists are participating and which was curated by Debbie Davies, ends on June 29. As part of the 48 Hour Neukölln cultural festival, the LiTE-Haus will be open longer than usual from June 27 to 29.

From June 21 to July 2, Elvira Flamm will be showing two works from her series Icons without names in Barcelona: Hub/Art Exhibition, in collaboration with ARS ART SPACE, presents the exhibition Freedom & Beauty: The Language of Art with paintings, photographs and digital art. 24 established and up-and-coming artists, mainly from Europe, will be offered a stage with an international audience without any restrictions on artistic freedom. Icons without names is based on media images, which Flamm gives a long-lasting visibility appropriate to their significance through their artistic transformation. They show people in crisis situations, but the people remain anonymous: they represent the situation, not themselves. In her media-critical paintings, Flamm characterizes anonymity through »pixels«.

Depending on the theme, Elvira Flamm chooses her artistic medium, often acrylic or watercolor painting, but also experimental approaches with unusual materials such as leaves in collage-like works or texts integrated into paintings, as in Fading Life. Most of her works are part of a series. Flamm's creative process does not follow a fixed structure: some works are created strictly according to a concept, others in an experimental, spontaneous way. Her life experiences in Suriname, where she lived for 16 years, have a particular influence on her work.