Breaking from conventional seasonal collections, By Told brings you small drop collections throughout the year, each with one work of Art at center stage.
MICRO COLLECTIONS
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In her artwork ICON Viktoria Strecker taps into primal forces within an earthly dreamscape that defies temporal perception. Employing a technique of applying multiple layers of oil pigments on photopaper, Strecker utilizes a scalpel to delicately remove dried pigment, revealing a landscape of winter palettes and warm, earthy hues emanating from its core. Gentle boulders rise like ancient sentinels, forming Icons, within Strecker's terrestrial tapestry of peat moss, stone, and clay, each guarding against the raw power of the earth's wilderness. Rippling with elements of earth and fire, Strecker's depiction of nature is a sanctuary where time stands still--a terrestrial reserve of pure enduring elements, where the tangible and intangible converge.
SKOTOME
ballpoint pen on paper
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Viktoria Strecker’s Skotom emerges from a realm where the boundaries between consciousness and the subconscious are blurred. Using a fine needle on board to translate visions arising from a heightened state of receptiveness, Strecker invites us to delve into an ethereal dimension. A conduit for whispers of collective consciousness and previsions, Strecker unravels intricate lights and electrical lattices manifesting in the periphery of her visual perception. Strecker’s visions explore the interplay between chaos and recognizable forms, taking her to the precipice where reality and the uncharted subconscious converge. A visual composition transcending Strecker's individual perspective, Skotom resonates as a mysterious language of unseen universal forces. Lying where the unknown and materiality intertwine, Strecker’s Skotom unveils the extraordinary that surrounds us.
S I N T E R
3D pen using wood based PLA
Strecker’s "Sinter" is a work of intricately detailed structures that elegantly weave together, forming a billowing dreamlike architectural tapestry.
A burgeoning masterpiece unfolds across the wall, its flowing and rhythmic waves capturing the viewer's imagination. "Sinter," a creation of the talented Viktoria Strecker, comes to life through the use of a 3D pen and PLA composed of ground wood particles and corn starch.
'Sinter,' a name rich in symbolism, alludes to the elusive 'Blitzsinter,' a German term for Fulgurite, a phenomenon that occurs when lightning, in its uncontrollable fury, strikes the earth, instantly transforming ordinary sand into intricately ornate, jewel-like formations. With a touch of nature's tempestuous power, Strecker embarks on a captivating alchemical journey, using the 3D pen's heat to elevate earthly materials into molten trails of delicately interwoven filigree reliefs.
"Sinter" by Strecker stands as an artifact born from the tempest itself, a testament to a moment of heat and haste. The material, once liquid, swiftly solidifies in an instant, setting an accelerated tempo for Strecker's confident and decisive artistic strokes. Her movements, honed through years of experimentation with molten materials, exude an air of freedom and spontaneity. Strecker's lace-like contours gracefully beckon the observer, and her swiftly melded materials form shapes that sweep you away into her ethereal world.
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KLEINFORMATE
ballpoint pen on paper
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In Kleinformate, Viktoria Strecker probes the boundaries of abstraction, playing with innate survivalist human instincts and deeply embedded memories to conjure iterations in her abstract drawings - a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia. Strecker’s repetitive organic structures cleverly arouse deep associative memories that toy with brain perceptions, fluidly transcending her abstruse organic forms into seemingly recognizable subjects. Deliberately devoid of color and made only with ballpoint pen and paper to underscore the power of form, Strecker’s monochromatic structures sporadically exhale flashes of lucidly recognizable figures, each time waking our own personal illusions. Dive in and dare to see where Kleinformate takes you.
M U S K
oil paint and ink on photopaper
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Strecker painted one of her masterpieces, Musk, in Berlin in 2021 using oil paint and ink on photopaper. Musk manifests an explosive fusion of contemporary and ancient materials, piercing through time as Strecker applies a self-mixed 400-year-old intense violet oil ink recipe on present day photopaper and marker ink. Reacting with the photopaper, the rich violet hues detonate with intensity around deep points of saturation, slowly easing into translucence with Batik-like effect. The sensual violet hues pulsate with life under the glow of Strecker’s colored lattice structures. The delicately drawn filigrees undulate rhythmically across the canvas, forming a thin veil that invites a discovery of the work’s iterations. Experience its effortless transitions from raw power to grace.
Strecker, expectant at the time of Musk’s creation, might be sharing a window into the genesis of life, each corner of the canvas bursting with vitality. Strecker’s pilgrimage of colors sends the canvas spinning into a carousel of life, swirling with brilliant flashes of color, only to be grounded by its intense sanguine undertones. Interlaced with an effervescence of life, Musk seems to transcend the senses as its name suggests—Musky. Rich. Sensual. Immerse in Musk and drink from the fountain of life itself.
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ETÜDEN FÜR DIE L I N K E
ballpoint pen on paper
Discover Etüden für die Linke, where Strecker’s focus, intention and presence are juxtaposed with an embrace of freedom and chaos.
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An expansive cascading work, with gracefully undulating rhythmic contours, was created by Viktoria Strecker with pen on paper using both her left and right hands simultaneously. With each hand movement shaping Etüden für die Linke intricately interwoven lace-like lines, Strecker pushes herself beyond the innate, balancing control and intention with experimentation and acceptance of the unknown.
An intelligent venture outside Strecker's own comfort zone, the drawing blossoms and flourishes in waves under the spell of its own courage. The composition’s architectural symmetry is met with flashes of unpredictability as erratic lines emerge from the left side of the delicate lattice work. Idiosyncratically authored by Strecker’s left hand, irregular forms bring about spontaneity and liberation, breaking from the overall organic order. Glimpses of playful discord eventually settle back into the overall flow of form, making way for a display of harmony in grand scale—- the large scale forming an identity almost independent from it’s filigree parts: an iteration takes place creating several dimensions to experience. Strecker’s deliberate interplay between structure and chaos echoes an underlying integration --and simultaneous tension-- between the cognitive left and right side. Within the drawing process both hemispheres of the human brain start to interact in a playful rhythm, the left hemisphere which is there for using language and analytical thinking is leading the right hemisphere which is responsible for intuition, creativity and visual thinking and the other way around.
Strecker`s brave experimental approach to artistry in Etüden für die Linke— where she consciously cedes control of the outcome while learning to trust in the power of the unpredictable-- is a study inspiring of the bigger questions in life. Let go, immerse, and permit the artwork to take you as far as you can go.
CARDIGAN
SHAWL
BONS is a delicate composition of floating featherweight paper receipts, so light that they flutter to your every breath. With a smoldering iron held to the back of wispy thermal paper, Strecker guides the formation of abstract organic, almost baroque shapes-- white, anthracite and black tones melt into forms that are seemingly alive, as if they continue to move and contort even after Viktoria has stopped applying heat.
The almost ethereal quality of BONS is beautifully grounded by Strecker's choice of material: shopping receipts, each with its storied earthly history….
Strecker’s delicate figures flicker and swirl, as if dancing and sparking from a bonfire - you are immediately drawn ever deeper into Strecker’s mesmerizing world. Piece by piece, each featherweight paper invites you through a secret passage leading you into her natural world. Strecker’s vaguely familiar organic forms infuse a sense of comfort, but you keep grasping for your bearings as you encounter the unexpected. Otherworldly, yet so blissfully uncontrived.
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