Oblique Strategies of Orchids
Bacchus,2023, Oil on canvas
30x40in (76.20x101.60cm)
The Whisper of Fallen Angels
by Miriam Dehne
The orchids blooming on the windowsill of a friend's light-flooded apartment in NYC were the trigger. Then, after learning how orchids communicate with each other their blooms become more full, vibrant and lush, artist Pia Dehne, began to feel the essence of these multi-sexual androgynous beings. Yet what do orchids tell each other when they stand together, and what delights them so much that they grow more extravagant when grouped?
Orchids: a flower that you can buy in a discount store, or for which you need to travel to the Peruvian jungle to find a unique blossom; a flower that is used as a youth elixir in expensive creams, at a cost of five dollars or three-hundred thousand dollars; or that is so rare that you can't actually find it, like the wild Rothschild Slipper Orchid.
The orchid is surrounded by myths and stories - from the Oscar-winning film Adaptation where its psychoactive ability to produce mescaline becomes the subject of a drug thriller, to its use as a highly effective medicinal plant in China and Turkey, and its generally hallucinogenic effect. Psycho delicacy - psychedelic euphoria; things reflected in Pia's new paintings from her Oblique Strategies of Orchids series. Sounds that build bridges between the past and the future. Longing for places you know and are reminded of again because you have forgotten them, like in a dream.
Although they tell a lot about her own past, Pia Dehne's paintings are not about searching for or mourning a lost time, but are instead about ensuring that this time is not lost. And so we come to another motif: music. What does orchid talk sound like? When they whisper, could it sound like ambient music? When they speak more loudly, might it sound like glam rock?
Lover Ungrateful Number2, 2025
Oil on canvas
20x16in (50.80x40.64cm)
Growing up in Dusseldorf and being part of the punk and new wave scene at the club Ratinger Hof in the 80’s, Pia explored music directly and also took cello lessons after being inspired by Public Image’s ‘Flowers of Romance’ album. Her focus then shifted after realizing that her skills of expression were more refined in the visual arts, but the exploration of musical ideas spiraled through her art in many projects such as Naked City, based on Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Electric Ladyland’ album, or I want to ride my bicycle, based on a Queen poster for their album Jazz.
In this 2025 series of orchid paintings, Pia found inspiration in the unique sounds of Brain Eno, his first albums and his early involvement with Roxy Music and later collaborations with the German band Cluster.
“I began to have visions of creatures that looked like orchids. I created cryptic paintings of dream-like orchids and their mysterious activities, incorporating hand gestures from Renaissance and Baroque masters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio.”
Pia Dehne
These paintings open gateways and give access to parallel worlds where orchids have developed telepathy; where men and women from the Renaissance and Baroque eras play cards or clarinet, while Brian Eno finds the perfect chord on his electric guitar. Meanwhile, knitting women look nearly bored at an execution during the French Revolution. A mixture of nonchalance and beauty. It's all about the hand gestures as an effective way of communicating secrets, codes and messages in these former times. We see this in the tricoteuses (the knitters) seen in Casa Susanna - a picture that refers to an underground network and large rural property in the Catskill region of upstate New York where transgender people and cross-dressers, persecuted in the 1950s and 1960s, found refuge.
Casa Susanna,2024
Oil on canvas
40x60in (101.60x152.40cm)
There they knit, sewed costumes, shared make-up techniques and wigs. And in the middle of this body of work, Brian Eno, as beautiful as he ever was in the 1970s. When asked why he wore make-up, he replied: "I just look better with make-up on!" Pia likes that. Giving answers and yet leaving everything open. For Pia, the connection between Baroque painting and Eno's music is shimmering and multi-faceted. Eno, of course, is often considered the inventor of ambient music and Oblique Strategies, a set of over 100 cards in a deck, each of which is a suggestion on a course of action or thinking to assist in creative situations where there may have been a blockage. For example, ‘You are an engineer’ and ‘Magnify the most difficult detail’. Cards with these two suggestions happened to be chosen by Pia when she began her orchid series.
VCS3,2024
Oil on canvas
40x30in (101.60x76.20cm)
“I often meditate on my ideas and this combination of orchids and Eno came together like a spaceship landing on earth. Perhaps orchids are fallen angels.”
Pia Dehne
Pia lives and paints in the Catskill region, a rather secluded place whose history is filled with spirituality, UFO sightings and stories about lost places like Casa Susanna. Two Egyptian-like cats, Chico and Lucia, are her otherworldly studio companions. And if you look very closely at Cosmonaut, in which Brian Eno’s profile appears in an orchid vine while operating a tape recorder, you can see a tiny paw print at the bottom edge of the canvas. Perhaps Lucia wanted to enter the picture and be in the room with the flowers, the tape and Brian Eno. Or maybe she just thought, I’d better sign it.
The name of this painting, Cosmonaut derives from the name given to the only orchid ever grown in outer space. Cosmonaut was grown aboard the Russian space station Salyut 6 in 1980 and returned to earth for use in biological and genetic experiments. Because of its non-Earth origin in a weightless environment it was considered priceless. Unfortunately the orchid died during a bungled flower-napping after being stolen by an amateur biologist.
Cosmonaut, 2025
Oil on canvas
40x90in (101.60x228.60cm)
The Oblique Strategies of Orchids series reveals parallel worlds in order to maintain connections so that nothing is lost from this beautiful, wild life. You can be as you are and become what you see and feel. Because only in art do you have the opportunity to create your own universes with a flood of images from the conscious and unconscious. Welcome to the universe of Oblique Strategies of Orchids.
Far Beyond the Pale Horizon, 2024
Oil on canvas
60x72in (152.40x182.88cm)
About the artist:
Pia Dehne has been an exhibiting artist for 30 years. Her work has been the feature of several solo exhibitions in NYC at Deitch Projects, Haswellediger & Co. Gallery, Blackston Gallery, Charles Bank Gallery, and in Berlin, Germany at Achim Kubinski Gallery and AJL Gallery as well as numerous group shows in NYC at White Columns, Salomon Contemporary, Eric Firestone, Mishkin Gallery, IS Gallery, The Corner Gallery in Andes,NY, and Art House in Mexico City.
Pia was born in Düsseldorf, Germany and received her Master of Fine Arts in 1994 at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Dehne later lived in Berlin before relocating to New York City in 1999. She has lived and worked in the Catskills since 2011
Pia Dehne’s work is featured in The Lab Mag’s FEAR edition.
About the writer:
Miraim Dehne is a filmmaker and writer working and living in Berlin. She is the painter’s sister and champion. As a director and writer, she is known for Die Sterntaler des Glücks (2021), B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989 (2015) and Little Paris (2008) along with countless other films. She is a regular contributor to The Lab Mag. Her work can be found in The Lab Mag’s DESIRE + FEAR editions. She wrote and directed ‘Mom’s Room’ for The Laboratory Arts Collective which was performed in Los Angeles with Suzanne Crowley in the lead role as Marilyn Minter’s mother.
About the exhibition:
Isabel Sullivan Gallery is pleased to present Faced with a Choice Do Both, an exhibition of twelve new oil paintings by Pia Dehne. March 13th - April 19th. This marks 20 years since Dehne’s first solo show in New York with Jeffrey Deitch, and her first with the gallery.
Faced with a Choice Do Both
March 13 - April 19, 2025
An opening reception with the artist
will take place at Isabel Sullivan Gallery
Thursday, March 13
from 6-8 pm
39 Lispenard Street, New York
very laboratory