In her paintings, which are at the heart of her artistic practice, Tina Gillen works from existing objects that she divests of all non-essential visual characteristics. Buildings, for example, a recurring focus of her pictorial research, are reduced to geometric volumes, edges and outlines or allusive colour stains.
Besides painting, Gillen makes occasional incursions into the realms of sculpture and installation, as is illustrated by Playground. This slender structure, made of steel tubes assembled at right angles and standing directly on the ground, suggests a variety of associations: scaffolding, industrial remains, public transport architecture… As in her paintings, the artist has dissociated the motif from its original context so as to enhance its graphicness. Behind the sober and methodical appearance of her structure, Gillen thus underscores its dynamic aspect and encourages us to reimagine a full-scale playground in the surrounding space.
