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Art is Love, Art is Listening, Art is Essence

ARTPROFIL in conversation with Gabriele Musebrink

ARTPROFIL: What is art to you?

Gabriele Musebrink: Art is love. Art is listening in its essence. It is a gift when we come to understand that art is all about “bringing something into the world”. And in between, it is a continual listening back and forth. Again and again. And communication. In everything I do, I am concerned with the connection to nature – the connection to being in its entirety.

ARTPROFIL: We are standing here in front of your works at art karlsruhe. Your paintings have a truly remarkable presence. Series of works such as ‘fusion’, in which different energies converge, or ‘dialogue’, with their subtle yet sculptural enigmatic quality, invite viewers to breathe out and pause in contemplation. You pass on your distinctive approach – what you call the “Process Painting of Intuitive Power” – on to your students. How do you teach them to recognise when a painting is finished?

Gabriele Musebrink: It resonates; it feels harmonious. A deep recognition: This is me! I guide my students clearly, yet gently, towards this point. The moment when “it” has arrived – recognition happens. Art does not emerge from mere doing; it arises from a space of receptivity, from allowing oneself to enter into the process.

ARTPROFIL: Nature, imprinting and essence are key concepts in both your painting process and in your most recent project. Could you tell us a little more about them?

Gabriele Musebrink: Only where imprint and perception begin to flow does the viewer enter a space of possibility. The “own” and the “other” shape a fluid space of perception. The project – titled THE RENEWAL – renders this “space in between” conscious. Not as an answer, but as an experience. Perception creates reality. Through becoming conscious, transformation becomes possible – a new way of being within one’s own being: as an individual, and as a whole.

ARTPROFIL: Was bedeutet Prägung für Sie?

Gabriele Musebrink: Prägung leitet unser Handeln und unsere Wahrnehmung der Wirklichkeit. Es gibt Prägungen, die nicht aus unserer Essenz heraus entstanden sind, diese entsprechen nicht unserer Qualität. Prägung ist permeabel, neu justierbar, verhandelbar im und Bewusstmachung. Mein neues Projekt führt all das zusammen, lädt ein, die eigene innere Ausrichtung wahrzunehmen und Verantwortung für das eigene Sehen zu übernehmen. Transformation und „Ankommen“ beginnt dort, wo Wahrnehmung bewusst wird. Materialien, Licht, Projektionen und Bewegung werden zu einem Erfahrungsfeld, in dem Besucher:innen selbst Teil des Prozesses werden. Es öffnet einen Raum: zur Begehung, zur Begegnung, zur Erforschung und zur Erfahrung. Einen Raum für mehrdimensionales Erleben. Einen Raum für Bewusstsein. Raum der Essenz.

ARTPROFIL: What does the idea of imprint mean to you?

Gabriele Musebrink: Conversations with suitable museums and exhibition venues are currently underway. I am confident that we will soon have identified the first locations.

ARTPROFIL: What are you grateful for in your life? Is there a place that is personally important to you?

Gabriele Musebrink: I am grateful that I have been given the ability to experience how important it is to sense and to feel. There is an inner place within me that I can always return to. In the external world, that place is a wicker armchair in my studio.

ARTPROFIL: Thank you very much for this enriching and open conversation here at art karlsruhe.

“Black and white is colourful” – a homage to all that does not divide us.

The Art of the Painter Gabriele Musebrink

World premiere at the recent art karlsruhe, 5–8 February 2026

Amidst the bustle of an outstanding art karlsruhe 2026, a sense of quietude and deep joy emerges. The works of Gabriele Musebrink touch us immediately. They are immersive, emotional experiences that address us with intimacy and grace through their subtle materiality and sculptural multidimensionality. Softly whispering, they allow us to sense belonging on the one hand, and freedom and individuality on the other. Seeing and feeling. Being perceived in our innermost selves. Being oneself. Being present. No more – but certainly no less!

Gabriele Musebrink’s art is enigmatically revealing – and, moreover, profoundly beautiful. Through an international mode of perception and communication spanning Europe, Japan, the United States and Africa, the artist attains a universal dimension. She understands that between imprint and perception, between what shapes us and what we experience, there lies a space – fluid, open, and dynamic. The impression of transparency and energy addresses the viewer directly; it is experienced and felt even by those of a more rational disposition. Her art arises from a deep fascination with the processes of nature – metamorphosis and transformation. Her unique practice is not imitation, but rather an immediate immersion, a deep engagement and a transformative permeation of what unfolds.

The captivating work “black and white is colourful No. 1/26” belongs to her new series of the same title. Rendered in luminous shades ranging from red to almost pink, alongside earthy pigment nuances, the piece reveals a flowing convergence into a unified whole. It vibrates with non-verbal dialogues, promises, stories and moments of gratitude, understanding and forgiveness. Experiences such as racism are transformed here into something positive, powerful and radiant. Through its positive force and presence, and its distinctive stele-like character, this work – first presented at the booth of Galerie Luzia Sassen at art karlsruhe – becomes, in its expanded dimension, a veritable counterpart. Soft fresco surfaces, glazed in ebony tones, shimmer in layered, almost otherworldly chromaticities. Here, colour extends far beyond sound and chromatic harmony to become a key to consciousness and a spatially immersive medium that invites us to engage in the process of becoming anew and of “radiating together”.

Gabriele Musebrink’s immersive works attract collectors and curators alike; their language is universal, connective and resonant across continents. “The trace that remains within me is simply silence and joy,” says Gabriele Musebrink of her working process. And this is precisely what is conveyed. Through her intuitively evolving paintings, the artist opens new spaces of interpretation. A “best-of” example of the scientifically documented phenomenon that certain works of art touch us at the deepest level. Gabriele Musebrink allows us to sense profound humanity and a devotion to everything she does. Her guiding principle, “Art is love”, is not the calculated stance of an artistic position, but one imbued with wisdom, authenticity and true essence.

Gabriele Musebrink – Paintings beyond willpower?!

„(…) To understand the complexity of existence, an awake and sensitive mind is needed, a tireless curiosity and a capacity to analyze and reflect upon what is being seen, experienced, known, and understood as ‘the self’. Yet, this way of thinking, which mainly belongs to the western cultural hemisphere, has its limitations. It is at least only one of many potential ways to experience the world and existence itself. Eastern spiritual traditions include both sensory and mental spheres of perception in the comprehension of the world and thereby represent a deeper and more holistic understanding of one’s own existence in the context of the great mystery. Gabriele Musebrink has already dedicated herself for many years to the philosophy of ZEN, its spiritual teachings and the expansion of awareness. The knowledge about the interrelation of all visible and invisible forces has been with her since ‘the beginning’.

Consequently, her work mixes aspects that are perceived as opposite poles in the western canon, but are actually interrelated from an eastern perspective: Existence and non-existence, becoming and decaying, light and shadow, density and transparency, spherical lightness and earthy masses, materiality and sensuality. These ideas and conceptions of interwoven realities manifest also in the artworks of Gabriele Musebrink. (…)“

‘Peaceful Signs’ – A Project for Inner Peace

“Gabriele Musebrink has initiated an art project that is being carried out together with three other women. In this project, drawings evolve that are 30 x 30 cm in size. Thick, handmade paper is torn into sized pieces and serves as a surface onto which natural materials are applied. This is characteristic for the Intuitive Process Painting of Gabriele Musebrink.

The project ‘Peaceful Signs’ focuses more on the process, less on the result; in present, peaceful interaction, the women work on single steps until the completion of the drawings, trying to be fully present and connected with themselves as well as with others. ‘Peace originates within one’s self’ (G. M.) (…)“

On the road without luggage

“(…) The material originating directly from nature is inalterably being conserved. It is not sublimed and there is no contamination. The material is not only means of creation of the artwork itself but represents a part that is intrinsically tied to it. The extraordinary perception of such an abstract work is based on and comes with a feeling of the existence of reality. (…)“

Change is the only constant

„(…) Gabriele Musebrink creates images which transform the classical landscape in an abstract manner - or appear to. Her imageries step out of the visual plane. They show vivid, relief-like surfaces with strongly developed structures, broken, sometimes rough with deep cracks and fine fissures. Their tactile expression almost forces you to explore them with your hands. (…)“

“(…) Gabriele Musebrink's paintings stay on our minds and are not forgotten easily. Not only technically does the artist deal with the shaping forces in art, but equally in Zen meditation practice, she investigates the transcendental dimension of reality. This can be found reading the tracks of her artworks and in the unique gesture of her artistic intervention.
So luckily, you can all move around here in this house and in Hasten over and over again and discover deeper levels of the primeval world of creative energy.”

"Sensitive, enraptured, ambiguous, but powerful, impulsive, determined – characteristic for the works of Gabriele Musebrink is that they always reflect both poles that belong to each nature, that they neither neglect one side nor the other. (...) and by their constant moving to and from they reproduce their unity as an entirety constantly anew (...).

So being outside of time and spirit of time, as well as being outside of (in the sense of art history) attempts to categorize Musebrink´s work deals with and reflects the universal lawfulness of nature and the questions of men. As we experience different stages, phases and processes within the span of life and death, in which things are constantly changing, because life means movement and also change, Gabriele Musebrink´s paintings, most of them being done by (Spatula) merely are the momentary result deriving from the once noticed traces, that materialize themselves into a new shape, through the artist, as she herself describes this process of transformation. Each one of her paintings therefore is a condensation coagulated at this unique and not repeatable moment, which only has its validity in that very moment."

"At a time, in which the German "established" painters are drumming up so loudly in the media that their noise is earsplitting, it often is difficult to detect the fine sounds at all. One cannot be but surprised that through all this fuss such silent works like those of Twombly, Kirkeby or Raetz are noticed and estimated according to their true value at all. It gives us great satisfaction and creates hope ... (Gabriele Musebrink´s) paintings require patience, a second, a third look before they unfold themselves in their intensity (...) nothing, not even the colours that shape the painting, are self-evident. They are material – aesthetic consequences, enforced by the subject. (...) The illusionistic picture is stripped of its concreteness, an archetypical manifestation so becomes visible. Pictures breathe the freshness of newly fallen snow. Abstraction´s modes of expression hereby are being extended in favour of a graphism of poetry, a writing down of generally applicable structures of thinking."

„Gabriele Musebrink chooses a mode of expression at times uncontrolled, then again very careful, not to exceed the limits of painting. She conveys a universe in constant transformation, the bubbling up of lava, torrential thunder storms, cruel Aeolian powers in furious agitation. (...)“

„Jedenfalls stellt die Ausstellung einen wahrhaft künstlerischen Akt dar, diese sechsundzwanzig Bilder, die unter dem leicht unwägbaren und zeitlosen Titel ‘Efemeride‘ (Vergänglichkeit) stehen, die das Auge des Besuchers zu einem unbequemen und widersprüchlichen Dialog provozieren, zu Themen, die immer schon das Denken der Menschen bewegt haben, wie zum Beispiel: das Gegenwärtige und das Ewige, das Vergängliche und das Dauerhafte, der Mensch und sein Schicksal, das Gute und das Schlechte, das Schöne und das Hässliche, das ‘was sein würde und was nicht sein würde‘. (…) Das Universum, das uns die Künstlerin vorstellt, ist ein ganz persönliches Universum, aber in unser Universum als Gesamtheit integriert, in dem die wichtigsten Elemente der Natur, Wasser und Feuer, Erde und Luft sehr stark gekennzeichnet werden. Deshalb sagten wir, dass die Malerei der Künstlerin keine ‘gegenständliche‘ Malerei ist, sondern eine der Ideen, in denen sich ‘das Auge, dass nach außen geschlossen ist, nach innen wach wird‘. (…)“