Philipp Hölke

Art

The Key to Oneself

A contour face in white over cobalt, beneath its own hand-lettered slogan — pain unlocks your innermost being. A portrait of the self recovered from stoic, hard-won truths.

A large frontal face built from pale contour lines over a cobalt-blue field on white paper, one eye ringed in red with yellow lashes; a purple wash and a green passage at lower right, and hand-lettered black capitals across the top reading "Pain unlocks your innermost being."

A face built almost entirely from pale contour — white line worked over cobalt until the head reads like a relief map of itself — staring out from beneath its own slogan. One eye is ringed in red and lashed in yellow, the only heat in a cold field; at the lower right the blue gives way to green and a bruise of purple.

The key to oneself lies in stoic truths of the past.

The lettering across the top makes the claim a second time — pain unlocks your innermost being — that the self is not found in comfort but recovered from old, hard-won knowledge, and that what opens it is the very thing we spend most of our lives avoiding.

3 plates

Close-up of the eyes and nose in white line, the right eye ringed in red with yellow lashes.
01 Detail — the eyes and bridge of the nose, the only heat in the field held in one red-ringed socket.
Close-up of the hand-lettered title and the face's right edge against a purple wash.
02 Detail — the lettering at the crown of the head, meeting the purple edge of the field.
Close-up of the lower field where blue meets green and purple, marked in oil-stick dashes.
03 Detail — where the cobalt breaks into green and a bruise of purple, worked in oil-stick dashes.