Vivian Greven
Vivian Greven
Vivian Greven’s painting is based on a masterful interplay with various notions of physicality, existence and representation, blending concepts from classical antiquity with Pop Art and digital imagery. Greven’s painting is characteristic of our present times, which is shaped by the internet and social media and thus dissolve the hierarchies between original, reproduction and simulation. This interweaving of art-historical and contemporary references finds its counterpart in Greven’s painterly treatment of surfaces. Parts of her paintings emerge from the picture plane as actual reliefs, encountering painted fictional representations of bodies and spaces. The aesthetic of her works thus oscillates between the physical materiality of painting and the seemingly immaterial illusion of digital LCD screens. In her paintings, Vivian Greven combines different concepts of the depiction of the body. Her works reveal a process of perpetual searching and discovery, which enables us to reflect on what defines us as human beings.
Vivian Greven (DE 1985) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Her works are held in internationally renowned museum collections, including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Long Museum Shanghai, and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Her work is currently on view in the exhibition ibid at Kunsthalle Nürnberg, as well as in the current collection presentation at Kunstpalast Düsseldorf. In 2027, the Yi Museum in Hangzhou, China, will present her first institutional solo exhibition. In 2024, the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen presented a dialogue between Greven’s works and those of Paula Modersohn-Becker, accompanied by a new publication. Further solo exhibitions have been held at venues including Neue Galerie Gladbeck (2023), Kunstmuseum Langmatt and Kunstverein Heidelberg (both 2021), and Kunstpalais Erlangen (2020). Recent group exhibitions featuring her work include Magical Women, Draiflessen Collection, Mettingen (2026); Double Cheese Platter: Centenary of the Collection, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, WE. Der Körper als Zeichen, Kunstmuseum Mülheim, Mülheim an der Ruhr, and MAMA, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (all 2025); The Infinite Woman, Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles, The Bathers, MORE Museum, Gorssel, New Presentation of the Collection, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and Between Pixel and Pigment, Kunsthalle Bielefeld/Marta Herford Museum (all 2024); Touching Forms, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2023); FourTimesFour, Hamburger Kunsthalle (2022); and Something Between Us, Kunsthalle Nürnberg/KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf (2020/21). On the occasion of her solo exhibition at Neue Galerie Gladbeck, a catalogue was published by Walther and Franz König, Cologne, in 2023.
