Rike Droescher

Stemming from observations of a fissured world, Rike Droescher's practice investigates how we shape and are shaped by our surroundings. In her sculptures, fragments of natural and domestic landscapes merge into one another. Conventional notions of inside and outside, protection and exposure, dissolve — emphasising vulnerability, decay, and regeneration of all living things.

Her works are created with keen sensitivity and a particular attention is posed on their material and formal language. Droescher employs materials deeply rooted in a primal relationship with the earth, such as sand, clay, and wood, leveraging the poetic qualities and potentials of these materials to create evocative, unvarnished sculptures tinged with a romantic and sentimental attitude. Variations of walls and houses, clothing, and especially the human hand are recurring motifs that both build a bridge and appear as thresholds between the human body and the environment. They become a membrane, memory box, and tools to survive and experience the world.

Reproductions and transformations of ordinary objects like branches, apples, or nests find their way into the sculptural process and take on a more symbolic meaning through their associative allusions to mythology,
human origins, and contemporary struggles. The back and forth from the mundane to the mystical, from the familiar to the elusive, permeates through her work. Within the spaces they inhabit, the works enter into a dialogue with one another, creating scenarios that recall distant memories of a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature and condense into allegories of grief, ambivalence, and longing. Between waking and dreaming, realism and fantasy, they unveil wounded bonds in our existence.

Rike Droescher (b.1990) lives and works in Dusseldorf (DE). She graduated in 2020 from the Kunstakademie
Düsseldorf, having studied in the classes of Professor Andreas Gursky, Alexandra Bircken, and Peter Piller. Solo exhibitions include Since The First Branch In The Hand, Atelier am Eck, Düsseldorf (2023), If You Call Me I Won’t Be Home, Palatului Mogosoaia, Bucharest (2022), The Big Murmur, Moltkerei Werkstatt, Cologne (2022) and Participation Trophy - Mur Brut, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf (2021). Her work featured in group exhibitions at Kunsthaus Essen, Essen (2023); Muzeul National al Hartilor si Cartii Vechi, Bucharest (2022); Fuhrwerkswaage, Cologne (2022); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf (2021); Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck (2021) and Goethe-Institut de Paris, Paris (2017), amongst others. She is the recipient of Stiftung Kunstfonds’s scholarship (2023), and Art Award for Sculpture of Diaconia Michaelshoven Cologne (2022) and was awarded the Bronner Residency in Tel Aviv (2023) and the Düsseldorf Ministry of Culture’s Residency in Bucharest (2022). She is currently a finalist in the Fregellae Prize for small sculpture (Ceprano, IT).