Natalia Drabik and Thomas Musehold, “Under the Spell,” at AURA Kunstraum, Düsseldorf.

“Under the Spell” by Natalia Drabik and Thomas Musehold, at AURA Kunstraum, Düsseldorf, 22/11/2024 – 15/12/2024.

Exhibition Text:
Under the Spell is the first joint exhibition by Düsseldorf-based artists Natalia Drabik and Thomas Musehold, examining the unconscious, residual-religious, and mystical aspects of our society. The works open a magical space where deep collective desires engage in a contemporary dialogue with the body—shaped, veiled, and instrumentalized. Between sirens and demons, masks and artifacts, an uncanny atmosphere emerges, inviting analysis in the clinically bright exhibition space.

In Natalia Drabik’s often sacral-looking paintings, femininity and the body are explored both in their vulnerability and as a means of self-empowerment. Her enigmatic portraits intimately engage with the body as a projection surface for personal and collective questions. Her figures seem to elude the viewer’s gaze, turning away with empty eyes to follow their own inner agenda. Drabik frequently returns to the form of the breast in her work—vulnerable and nurturing, yet simultaneously a symbol of power and conflict. In the first room, she opens her exploration with a monumental close-up of the Lupa Capitolina. The mythical she-wolf who nourished Romulus and Remus embodies an ambivalent, faceless figure: both victim and symbolic origin of a patriarchal narrative that appropriates her maternal body while elevating her to a mythological icon.

Thomas Musehold’s sculptures are transformed relics of our cultural memory. He subjects these objects to an essential, almost iconoclastic metamorphosis to reveal hidden meanings. The integration of texts has evolved from an initially rudimentary approach to a central artistic practice. Musehold draws on literary and scientific references, which he—analogous to his sculptural methods—transposes into new contexts. In the thematic field of masks, Musehold stages an intricate interplay of societal phenomena and archetypes. These appear like malevolent spirits trapped in the masks, while the accompanying texts uncover their stories and interpretations. His works thus open up a multifaceted dialogue between materiality, narrative, and cultural reflection.