Rike Droescher
Rike Droescher creates objects and sculptural scenarios in which material, space, and body become part of an investigation into how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings. In her work, fragments of natural and domestic landscapes often merge into one another. Notions of inside and outside, protection and exposure, past and present collide, overlap, and coexist. Guided by a largely intuitive process, she weaves a dense web of associations within each scenario that is never fully decoded.
Combining a distinctive sensitivity to materials rooted in a primal connection with the earth, such as sand, clay, and wood, with her background in textiles, Droescher's works are imbued with tactile and poetic qualities. The relationship to the human body becomes both visual and tangible in her practice, where variations of curtains and carpets, pillows, and especially the human hand are recurring motifs. These elements function as both bridges and thresholds between the body and its environment. Recreations of ordinary objects, along with translated visual images and gestures, enter her sculptural process, through associative ties to human origins and cultural anthropology, lived experiences and myths. They become membranes, memory boxes, and tools for surviving and encountering the world.
The oscillation between the mundane and the mystical, the familiar and the elusive, permeates her work. Matter and narrative dissolve into a tender, playful blur of contemporary and ancient worlds, of marks and wounds and dreams, of humans come and gone. Within the spaces they inhabit, her works engage in dialogue with one another, forming scenarios that read like poems suspended in space and time — unveiling an archaeology of inner landscapes that constantly seeks to glimpse the core of human existence.
Rike Droescher (b.1990) lives and works in Dusseldorf (DE). She graduated in 2020 from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, having studied in the classes of Professor Andreas Gursky, Alexandra Bircken, and Peter Piller.
Solo exhibitions include 'Listen, they left a sigh in the curtain', Alice Amati, London (2025); 'Since The First Branch In The Hand', Atelier am Eck, Düsseldorf (2023); 'If You Call Me I Won’t Be Home', Palatului Mogosoaia, Bucharest (2022); 'The Big Murmur', Moltkerei Werkstatt, Cologne (2022); and 'Participation Trophy - Mur Brut', Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf (2021). Her work featured in group exhibitions at Kunsthaus Essen, Essen (2023); Muzeul National al Hartilor si Cartii Vechi, Bucharest (2022); Fuhrwerkswaage, Cologne (2022); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf (2021); Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck (2021) and Goethe-Institut de Paris, Paris (2017), amongst others. She is the recipient of The City of Neuss Art Award (2025), Stiftung Kunstfonds’s scholarship (2023), and Art Award for Sculpture of Diaconia Michaelshoven Cologne (2022) and was awarded the Bronner Residency in Tel Aviv (2023) and the Düsseldorf Ministry of Culture’s Residency in Bucharest (2022) and was a finalist in the Fregellae Prize for small sculpture (Ceprano, IT) in 2024. She is currently an artist in residece at Cabin (USA).
