Vivian Greven’s painting is based on an adept play with various notion of bodies, being and representation, with concepts of classical antiquity merging with pop art and digital image worlds. Vivian Greven’s painting is characteristic of our present times, which are shaped by the internet and social media and thus dissolve the hierarchies between original, reproduction and simulation. The art historical and contemporary historical nestling corresponds with Greven’s painterly treatment of surfaces. Parts of her painting rise as actual reliefs that encounter sprayed or painted fictions of bodies and space. The aesthetic of her pictures vacillates between the vocabulary of physical painting and the ethereal illusion of LCD windows.
Vivian Greven (DE 1985) lives and works in Düsseldorf. She is represented in internationally renowned museum collections such as Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Xiao Museum Rizhao, Long Museum Shanghai, Sammlung Kunsthaus NRW and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Recent solo exhibitions were shown at the Neue Galerie Gladbeck (2023), Kunstmuseum Langmatt, Kunstverein Heidelberg (both 2021) or Kunstpalais Erlangen (2020). Recent group exhibitions have been „Touching Forms“ at Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin, „FourTimesFour“ at Hamburger Kunsthalle (both 2022), „In aller Munde“ at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2021), „Something Between Us“ at Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2019) or „Now! New German Painting“ at Kunstmuseum Bonn, Deichtorhallen Hamburg and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (2019). On the occasion of her solo exhibition at Neue Galerie Gladbeck, her recent catalogue was published by Walther and Franz König, Cologne in 2023.