Text by Angeline Madaghdjian (Musée d'art contemporaine de la Haute-Vienne), 2020

Henriette von Muenchhausen gets inspired by childhood memories and the everyday life to create a universe where poetry, photography, installation and painting mingle. For her, poetry is an attitude. Her images can enter the viewer's mind, like words do, and enlarge the imagination. Her work is sometimes abstract and sometimes figurative, evoking creatures or living forms and turning them into magic. Humour, play, colours, the relational and the absurd form the essence of her body of work. Henriette von Muenchhausen plays with our expectations and it is this play between attraction and repulsion which creates the relation between the viewer and the artwork.

Original text in French:

Henriette von Muenchhausen s’inspire à la fois de souvenirs d’enfance et de sa vie quotidienne pour créer un univers artistique où s’entremêle poésie, photographie, installation et peinture. Pour l’artiste, la poésie est une attitude et, tout comme les mots, ses images peuvent pénétrer l’esprit des gens et grandir leur imaginaire. Son travail est parfois abstrait, parfois figuratif, fait appel à des créatures ou à des formes vivantes, rendant le tout quasi magique. L’absurde, l’humour, le jeu, les couleurs et le relationnel constituent l’essence de son œuvre. Henriette von Muenchhausen joue avec nos attentes et c’est ce jeu entre attraction et répulsion, qui crée la relation du visiteur à l’œuvre d’art.

Text by Barbara Soyer, The Drawer, 2020

Henriette von Muenchhausen draws, sculpts and writes. Her fuchsia pink, lemon universe is populated by often grotesque figures. "I always am in search of the ridiculous", she affirms in an interview from December 2018. The German artist, fan of Franz West and Mika Rottenberg, cultivates a sense of idiocy and play in her works, which she says live their own lives once left alone. Suggesting movement, her creatures seem to express their surprise in being here: round eyes, half-laughing, half-pouting expressions, they give us the eye, seductive in their own way.