Exhibitions


Press


Contact


Info


CLOSE

2025

Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (forthcoming)
ARCH, Athens, Greece (forthcoming)
Bortolami, New York, USA (forthcoming)
Thomas Schulte Galerie, Berlin, Germany (forthcoming)

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

Close

Close

09.2015
Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition
Queens
New York, USA





Lena Henke’s installation “Stand Back”, will integrate animate and inanimate to create a whimsical tableau of a metal and sand sculpture sited beneath a weeping willow tree. The iconography of the melancholy weeping willow tree - a stand-in for classic Romantic depictions of death and nature -contrasts with the unsent imental industrial sand and metal materials. Sited together along the East River at Socrates Sculpture Park, the juxtaposition reference sand undermines many Romantic art historical depictions of the natural.For Henke, classic literary symbolisms of the willow tree, such as Shakespeare's "Hamlet" when doomed Ophelia breaks willow branches and tosses them into the river where she eventually drowns herself, furthers the emotional play of the three-dimensional artwork along the water.

The title,Stand Back, refers to a 1983 Stevie Nicks song of the same name. Nicks wrote the song on her wedding day and describes the song as being about "endings and beginnings" andincludes the lyrics, “like a willow I can bend...", which references to the adaptability of the willow tree. Like the Nicks song, Henke’s workStand Back will morph and evolve over time, as wind and weather reshape the tree and the sand and metal structure, washing away art historical references with a contemporary sensibility. After the exhibition, the willow tree will remain installed permanently at Socrates Sculpture Park.

  • 1 / 7
  • 2 / 7
  • 3 / 7
  • 4 / 7
  • 5 / 7
  • 6 / 7
  • 7 / 7