Neuss, Germany, 1968
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Isa Melsheimer’s work centers around a research-driven dialogue with history, and in particular with the architectural and design history of the 20th century with all its political, ideological and social complexities. Within this dialogue Melsheimer’s artistic practice is idiosyncratic and eclectic in formal and aesthetical terms, and yet at the same time grounded (often literally) in time and place.
Melsheimer works in a wide variety of media and materials, primary among which are sculpture (often in concrete or glass) and gouache paintings, but also extending to ceramics, textiles, embroidery, living plants, and video. Melsheimer frequently arranges these objects and materials into autonomous installations characterized by juxtapositions of sharply contrasting and even opposing characteristics, such as between the inorganic and the organic, monumentality and intimacy, delicacy and stolidity, observation and imagination.
While using historical research and site-specificity as a point of departure, Melsheimer’s practice as a whole is less concerned with factual reconstruction than with imaginative and artistic interpretation, channeling her chosen references and source materials into aesthetically accomplished works notable for a skillful and nuanced use of color, form and texture that transcends specific medium and format.
