Visual Art | Natural Science
Microscopy
Making Visible the Invisible
A regard for the beauty of the smallest elements of life is a key characteristic of my work.
Tardi Rama 25+
Drawings of Tardigrades (commonly known as water bears) using colored pencil and graphite on paper.
Studies on the ontology of this unique multicellular organism.
An artistic and critical exploration of the interdependence between context | living conditions and being | form of appearance.
Cell-like, biomorphic color forms visualize life — the resilient pursuit of cohesive harmony and stability.
This chromatic and planar precision is overwritten, separated, or rearranged by graphite — spontaneously, regularly in decay — revealing the fragility of existence in a new form: the endless awakening of the water bear from cryptobiosis.
Tardigrade Parade I, 2025
graphite, colored pencil on paper
120 x 74,1 cm
Tardy-Rama I+II, 2025
graphite, colored pencil on paper
120 x 74,1 cm
Was mich im Innersten zusammenhält…I 2020
graphite, coloured pencil on paper, 95 x 120 cm
Was mich im Innersten zusammenhält...I,2020
Making the invisible visible: a microscopic view of the smallest building blocks of identity.
Drawing as an act against forgetting.
An artistic exploration of neural, spontaneous, and synaptic networks as the storage of memory.
A scientific image of what holds me (us) together at the deepest level.
Kartoffeltierchen I, 2023
represents a spontaneous, tension-filled prelude to the eponymous series of large-scale, biomorphic drawings.
Kartoffeltierchen I
2023
graphite, coloured pencil on paper,
42 x 29,7 cm
Crossing Over V, 2024
graphite, coloured pencil on paper
42 x 29,7 cm
"Crossing Over", 2024
is a spontaneous synthesis of the various drawing techniques Denise Schellmann has deployed in the last five years of her
work.
A kaleidoscope of the invisible.
At its centre is a condensation from the Black Hole series, a typical formal motif from the artist’s time
collaborating with CERN (2016–2019). The title Crossing Over is borrowed from genetics and refers to a process in which the exchange of
chromosome parts creates something entirely new.
Und Ignaz sagte:, 2024
The intuitive drawing "Und Ignaz sagte:" regales with colour and joy against the black background of the Semmelweis reflex: the initial reflexive
rejection of all that, in its newness, does not conform with prevailing norms and convictions
Und Ignaz sagte:
2024
graphite, coloured pencil on paper,
62,8 x 100 cm
"Who Am I to Tell You...? VI", 2020
is the final work in the series.
It concludes the fluid interplay of conflicting forms in a reduced, colour-harmonised
gesture.
Who am I to tell you? VI
2020
graphite, coloured pencil on paper, 70 x 100 cm
„Colours and Lines“
Studies on colours and shapes.
Conceived as diptychs, they visualise the dialectic between connection and dissolution.
Iconic, spontaneous forms visualise the colours of life its very self. It is only in the cohesive whole that stability and solidity emerge from the order of
cell-like, biomorphic forms. Harmony in colours and surfaces, surprising in their outcomes and not plannable, like life – microscopic life inclusive –
itself.
Colours & Lines | Studies III + IV
2024
graphite, coloured pencil on paper, 100 x 61,8 cm
A fragile togetherness. Black fault lines that condense in the dissolution inscribed into life from its very beginnings. They grow into tissue-like
structures that separate and overwrite what once was orderly. Uncoordinated, boundless. In the disintegration of the formal, colourful harmony,
these fabrics gain their autonomous identity. Newness emerges, integrating the old.
Colours & Lines | Studies V + VI
2024
graphite, coloured pencil on paper, 100 x 61,8 cm
