Carbon Casuals
Sexauer Gallery/ Galerie Oel-Früh
Carbon Casuals
n her new series CARBON CASUALS, Verena Issel unveils a suite of vibrant oil pastel works that, at first glance, radiate a sense of playfulness, even lightheartedness. Everywhere one looks: feet in pool slides, sandals, flip-flops. Pairs of feet repeat in seemingly endless variations—side by side, layered, cast in shadow, bathed in light. It is a humorous motif, yet the levity is deliberately misleading.
Issel harnesses the cheerful immediacy of these images to reveal the weightier themes beneath: the carbon footprint, the ecological trace we leave behind. What endures of us—and what do we deposit in our wake? In a world growing ever hotter, summer becomes a near-permanent condition; pool slides shift from stylistic accessory to climatic necessity. Heatwaves, rising seas, climate-driven migration—these form the invisible shadows nestled between the brightly painted toes.
Rather than moralizing, Issel allows absurdity itself to articulate the critique. She directs attention to the aesthetic by-products of the Anthropocene, the inadvertent “style” of a planet in crisis. The global emergency becomes a stage set; the pool slide, an emblem of a culture more captivated by surface and spectacle than by underlying causes.
CARBON CASUALS stands as an ironic yet incisive portrait of the present moment—a wry cultural diagnosis of a society treading on thin plastic while the ground beneath it is already burning.
INGREDIENTS:
- Carbon Casuals
Carbon Casuals 9, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 13, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Installation view Galerie Oel-Früh
Carbon Casuals 11, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 23, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Fred Dott, Hamburg
Carbon Casuals 15, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 22, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
54 x 74 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 14, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 2, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 3, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Installation view Galerie Oel-Früh
Carbon Casuals 1, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 10, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Installation view Galerie Oel-Früh
Carbon Casuals 17, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 20, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
74 x 54 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 18, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 5, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 12, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 8, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 6, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 19, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
74 x 54 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 16, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 4, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 24, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
74 x 54 cm
Photo: Fred Dott, Hamburg
Carbon Casuals 21, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
74 x 54 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Carbon Casuals 7, 2025
Oil pastel on lightfast museum board
100 x 68 cm
Photo: Marcus Schneider