DIDI LEHNHAUSEN

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didilehnhausen@icloud.com
IG: @didilehnhausen
 
STUDY OF THE STANDING SUN III
Painting 2025
Pigments, Gesso, Oils and Acrylics on raw canvas, 788cmx220cm
An 8-meter painting painted during the summer to fall equinox in 2025. When both light and dark are equal and a moment before the descent towards the darkest day of the year. The ground drawings in these series are tracing nativity scènes and are exploring rituals on the change of seasons. 

22 GOSPELS
Installation 2025
22 paintings of between 140x200cm and 285x246cm
Twenty-two paintings based on the embroidery work of Chris Enthoven (1907) in a garden in Northern Italy. 

FOOLS RUSH
Installation 2025
Sixteen analogue prints on analogue RC paper, 127x88cm
Created through a choreography in the darkroom, where the paper was exposed to picture negatives, objects, and painted on with developer. The pictures originate from 20th-century photo albums and were manipulated and painted on before being enlarged into large-scale negatives. The painted marks transform into pictures, and the printing technique serves as a form of painting.  

LOSS 
 Darkroom Paintings 2025
Seven analogue prints on ilford RC paper
A series of seven darkroompaintings, pushing the limits of photographic. The darkroompaintings were installed together with Seven Planets.  




STUDY OF THE STANDING SUN I
Installation 2025
Pigments, acrylic, gesso, oilpastels on canvas, 221x788cm
A painting spanning almost 8 meters of wall, made around the winter solstice. The work explores social-cultural routines in Europe and the impact of a changing environment. The ground drawing, inspired by nativity scenes from Italy, is layered with pigments and gestures applied by multiple hands in daylight during last years darkest days. 

SEVEN PLANETS
Installation 2025
Pigments, acrylic, gesso, oilpastels on canvas, 300x285cm, 2024
 Seven paintings created on raw canvas, where layers of pigments, drawings, and paint merge into a unified surface. Gesso is selectively used to divide layers, revealing an internal order within the material. This method, resembling the batik process, reflects on questions on origin and belonging. Whether belonging is tied to one’s place of origin or if it is possible to belong to a place you have never been, but only imagined. 



DROPS OF A MOUNTAIN
Exhibition 2024
Oil on linen

Paintings made during a working period in Italy, between the marble mountains of Carrara and the old paper workshops in Florence. The paintings were at one point submerged in a water bath where strands of oilpaint attached to the linen, a method inspired by the paper marbling tradition. Figures reemerge as layers peel away, revealing cracks or gaps in the surface. Sometimes, the medium's instability causes paint to drip off, exposing linen or erasing the gesso beneath.

RECLINING VENUS
Painting 2023
watercolor and oil pastel on paper, 70x150cm
In 2022 and 2023, I wrote and painted about color. Through color theories, stories emerged about belonging, growing up, and raising children. The publication Ancient Eyes with Purple Glasses brings together these texts and paintings. “Reclining Venus” is one of the paintings featured in the book.
NO NIGHT DREAMING
Installation 2023
Dye pigments beeswax oilstick and pastel on antique bed linen, 275x229cm
This work is part of a series of batik paintings created on antique bed sheets. The piece evokes the fleeting, lucid images of dreams that fade into daylight, especially on nights broken by interruptions. The use of antique linens ties the work to personal and historical narratives of rest, nurturing, and domestic space. The layering of dye, pigments, and oil pastels reflect the blurring of memory and consciousness.

HORNED MARY
Painting 2023
Pigments, Oil, Pastel, acryclics on linen, 164x123cm and 164x164c,
A series of paintings that developed over the course of a year, composed of various layers built up through repeated acts of painting and erasure. During this time-span I attempted to dissect the images presented around me of pregnancy, birth and motherhood.