Berens creates decadently absurd paintings using certain renaissance and 19th century historical pigments and techniques to emulate, subvert and reference the at times conceptually limiting historic traditions of oil painting. He creates these paintings to life-scale. They reference and question the hierarchies of still life, portrait and multi-figural composition. As a queer and trans person, gender and sexuality are central to their work, most of his portraits are in some way a self-portrait. They use the surrealist technique of free association and research into esoteric, stranger than fiction topics to imagine these odd scenes. The work is concerned with ideas of cultivating a bizarre catalogue of personal lore, irrationality and the ever-true statement of reality being fantastical. They are intrigued with the idea of kitsch and play with it in their paintings as a way to express complicated feelings and to memorialize the seemingly cheap, obscure and insignificant. He re-thinks hedonism and vice by exploring what Sin-City levels of superficiality can tell us about deeper aspects of human nature. They create beauty out of subject matter perhaps not traditionally seen as beautiful. Their work is influenced by the sensibilities of 19th century academic painting, Japanese street fashion, 70’s manga as well as transgressive film and the writings of Joris Karl Huysmans and Oscar Wilde. Greta Berens is based in Milwaukee. They have a BFA in Fine Art / New Studio Practice from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. In 2025 they attended Yale Norfolk School of Art.