Kalin Lindena

Kalin Lindena calls her artistic interventions gestures. They are lines of movement cut into the space and twisted to form; shapes, objects, works that are also traces of her rather unusual career path as a professor at the art academy. For Lindena’ s work originated in graffiti. “ The artist who sprays” , was the ambiguous title of an article written about her in 2015. Before studying at the HBK in Braunschweig under Hartmut Neumann, Johannes Brus and Walter Dahn, Lindena was a sprayer on the streets of Hannover. And even though she has taught and led a painting class in Karlsruhe since 2014, this origin is still reflected in her artistic work. As technique and subculture, graffiti shapes her practice as well as her self-image. It’ s an imprint that does not manifest itself in any outwardly catchy aesthetic, but becomes particularly recognizable when one tries to understand the painterly and sculptural, installative and performative works as, well, gestures. She who paints gesturally paints in space, as in the case of graffiti. In contrast to pencil or charcoal on paper, every line sprayed inevitably becomes a movement of the entire body. And thereby also becomes its trace.