Nelli Wilhelm
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A portrait-format picture in night blue, grey and yellow with thick, smeared brushstrokes. At its centre is a large, fragmented face beneath a yellow cap; cogs sit in the left eye and a swirl of stars in the right. A green stairway with arched arcades zigzags up from the bottom edge through the face, with a clock tower along it. Translucent white figures with glowing yellow hearts drift upward at the left, while pale strands of hair and yellow blossoms sweep across the right. A small moon with a triangle in it hangs at the upper right.

The Stairway Inward

“The Stairway Inward” is a work about memory, perception and the search for one's own inner space. A seemingly endless architecture of stairs runs through a fragmented face, linking different layers of time, consciousness and identity. Clocks, cogs and translucent figures appear like traces of past experience that never fully dissolve but go on working inside.

The shadowy figures read as memories, thoughts or earlier versions of one's own self. Points of yellow light break through the cool, dark palette and lend the picture a sense of hope. Yet the stairway leads to no visible destination. Instead it becomes a symbol of an inner movement: of searching, remembering and understanding.

The work moves between painting, dream and surreal imagery. It asks whether growth is really a path forward — or sometimes rather a path deeper into ourselves.