The gallery has represented Hilde Trip since 2020, developing a close and continuous collaboration around her distinctive artistic practice using natural materials. Following the successful presentation of her work at Art Toronto in 2025, Schlieder Contemporary will return to the fair this fall with a new selection of works by the artist.
Trip works exclusively with materials from flora and fauna that she collects herself, including leaves, seeds, feathers and dandelions. Following the rhythms of the seasons, she gathers, dries and preserves these delicate elements before transforming them into meticulously constructed works, often over the course of several months.
Her practice is based entirely on materials that already exist in nature and have been naturally released from their original environment. This resource-conscious approach is an integral part of her artistic philosophy. Rather than depicting nature, Trip allows nature itself to become the material and substance of the artwork.
The exhibition title, Fragile Permanence, reflects one of the central tensions within her work: the attempt to preserve what is inherently transient. Fragile organic materials that would normally decay, disperse or disappear are carefully conserved and given a new, lasting presence.
Trip’s work also enters into a dialogue with the tradition of the Dutch still life, translating its centuries-old preoccupation with transience, time and the beauty of the ephemeral into a contemporary visual language. While historical still-life painters represented flowers, plants and other natural elements through paint, Trip works directly with the materials themselves.
At a moment when our relationship with nature is increasingly shaped by the climate crisis, questions of resources and sustainability, and a simultaneous desire for slowness and reconnection, Trip’s work offers a quiet yet highly contemporary perspective. Without resorting to overt symbolism or pathos, her works invite a concentrated reflection on natural cycles, transformation and the passage of time.
Through their precision, material delicacy and often sculptural presence, the works in Fragile Permanence occupy a space between contemporary still life, sculpture and installation. What appears fragile becomes enduring; what would normally disappear is temporarily preserved.
Exhibition: Hilde Trip: Fragile Permanence
Exhibition duration: 5 September – 7 November 2026
Address and contact:
Schlieder Contemporary
Berliner Straße 32
60311 Frankfurt am Main
www.schliedercontemporary.com
