Untitled, 17 x 22cm, 2008about Vera Hilger
Prof. Dr. Blanchebarbe
The topic of Vera Hilger´s new work is the accumulation of structures, a sedimentation of extremely fine layers. Her paintings deal with form and colour.
On the one hand, she is concerned with space - the mental as well as the literally mindless space of memory; she is interested in a world of objects which change their expression in the light of their own power of experience.
Vera Hilger´s art is a quest for the coordinates which define the structure of pictorial space - for coordinates which limit or extend it. Therefore one can only tentatively approach her paintings by means of (through) language - it will inevitably remain inaccurate, subjective and inadequate. The borderline between the categories of shape and colour is blurred. Colour becomes form, simultaneously maintaining its material quality, its "texture". As it is never the same, never static, its variability makes it the substance which transports light. The suggestions of shapes that are placed on accumulations of paint evoke manifold connotations; however, the access to the painting remains the most important aspect - what counts is its development. That is why randomly fringed spots appear on some paintings whose glaze not only indicates but actually accentuates the deeper layers of paint and colour. Some paintings change in a peculiar way while you look at them. They may give the impression of vital impetuosity at first glance, but they show traces of well-planned structuring the next moment. They may entice the viewer to come up with figurative connotations, but they may simultaneously restrict this offer by ascertaining semantic openness. Vera Hilger´s paintings are full of nuances and refractions. The viewers must keep moving to take them in completely and detect their abundance of form and colour. They must find their standpoint, reconsider and control it to be able to appreciate the painting in full. The viewers are requested to decipher the painting like a text, they are supposed to penetrate into its structure and extend their own insights. If one accepts this challenge, several levels become apparent which have been superimposed in the painting process and they remain visible in the completed painting in their traces, suggestions and reminiscences. Thus the paintings offer a variety of possibilities of synthetised viewing and yet in the end constitute an entity. The extraordinarily sensuous quality of Vera Hilger´s paintings makes viewing a fundamental experience. The active viewer is guided by the intellect, which in turn transforms the understanding of the paintings into a process of reflection. In everything it alludes to, the painting always refers back to itself. It always presents its means, the substance of the paint, at the same time, but it does not exhaust itself in this process. The layers begin to oscillate, culminating in a vibrato which is intensified by the anonymity of the form even if a faint memory of the landscapes of the earlier paintings remains. The neighbourhood of elements of form and colour on various origins and character contributes to the complexity of spacial appearance, and it distinctively draws attention to a phenomenon closely linked with their special constitution - that of a multi-layered development in time.
In this context, the aspect of time becomes important, as each painting maintains its own quantity of time. Vera Hilger´s paintings are a homage to the moment, the point in time which leads to the final pictorial expression, as "seeing is orientation in space and time" (Gerhard Hoehme).
Vita
1971 born in Schleiden (D)1991 -1993 studied philosophy at the RWTH Aachen (D)
1993 -1997 graduated from the Akademie Of Arts Maastricht (NL)
Lives in Hauset (B) and Cologne (D)
Selected exhibitions
2012 Exhibition of one work in the format 6 m x 2,80 m at the St. Nikolaus Church in Aachen | May
2011 ikob Arts Award 2011, Museum of Contemporary Art in Eupen (B)
Vera Hilger - Works 2010/11, Gallery Freitag 18.30, Aachen
2009 Gleam, Siegerlandmuseum Ausstellungsforum Oranienstrasse, Siegen
2008 grant at Starke Foundation, Artist in residence, Berlin
2007 grant at Starke Foundation, Artist in residence, Berlin
Gallery Geymüller, Essen
Gallery Arcane, Liège (B)
2006 Sfumato, Raum für Kunst, Aachen
Landscape, Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht (NL)
2004 petit comité, Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht
2003 Walk Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht
2002 Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht
2001 Gallery Pin, Bielefeld
2000 Gallery Cave Canem, Aachen
1999 Gallery Cave Canem, Aachen
1997 Graduates' exhibition Akademie Of Arts Maastricht, Maastricht
1995 Gallery van Laethem, Hasselt (group exhibition)
catalogues and editions
- Gleam, Siegerlandmuseum Ausstellungsforum Oranienstrasse, 2009
- Sfumato, Raum für Kunst, Aachen 2006
- Walk Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht 2003
Awards/Scholarships
2011 nomination for the ikob Arts Award 2011, Eupen (B)2007 Artist in residence, grant at Starke Foundation, Berlin
Imprint
Copyright:
All contents on "www.verahilger.de" are copyright protected. All rights reserved. Reproduction, no matter of which kind, whether fotocopy or acquisition in data processing systems, will only be allowed by written approval from Vera Hilger.Hint:
By judgement of 12 May 1998, the district court of Hamburg ruled that one is jointly responsible for the contents of a linked page unless one dissociates oneself clearly from these contents.The following applies for all these links:
It is clearly emphasised that we have no influence whatsoever on the creation or information of the externally linked web sites and do not claim the contents to be ours. We dissociate ourselves from the contents of all externally linked pages on "www.verahilger.de"
Owner and person in charge:
Vera Hilger,VeraHilger29[at]yahoo[dot]net
Design, technical concept and release :
Jörg Burggraf at zone5, Berlin© 1998-2011 , by Vera Hilger
All rights reservedcontemporary painting
Abstract art paintings
contemporary art
Modern Art
Landscape painting
Sfumato
german artist
contemporary painting
About the gleam of the matter
Markus Baldegger
A spiral is a serpent winding vertically around nothing - without being a serpent.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, 117
Contemporary painting
The first look out of the window in the morning. When the shimmering light rises, when the wide landscape gradually appears out of the mist. Vera Hilger has been working in Belgium for years, being faced with the oscillation of light and air.
Apart from the illusion of space, that of light is one of the phenomena painters are concerned with. Each material has its language, is a language. Vera Hilger applies the material - distemper and oil paint - in a very special, characteristic way. In her paintings she has developed an unmistakable language with a very personal syntax and individual pictorial strategies. One aspect which all paintings have in common is that they are artistic attempts to realize the diverse gleam of light by means of paint.
The original way in which the material is kneaded, altered, and formed brings about a very complex painting substance which is typical of her paintings. "I want the material to gleam so that it gains some sort of preciousness through the way the paint is applied. Gleam is light falling on something. This may be a gleaming landscape or vibrating air. It is indirect, diffuse light. There may be a gleam on a certain spot only, but the rest, the whole surface adopts the gleam."
Asked how she produces this gleam, she explains: "I try to make the material do something it is able to do on its own. By means of a glaze, for example, or by washing the painting off or by applying the paint in a certain way, I may bring about effects which evolve from the material itself and indicate how I can go on."
Abstract art paintings
The texture which develops over long periods of time contains all the perturbations of the painting process; the time, the duration of the process has left traces. One can detect in the skin of the paint that it has developed through many layers, dislocations, distortions and contrasts of cold and warm, light and dark, thick and thin and the like. This is how clusters of colour develop in which all tinges merge and vibrate, grown like the skin of onions or the growth rings of a tree. Slow paintings, decelerated perception, time sealed in matter."The lightest spot evolves gradually - not through light dabbed on the surface, but through repeated layers of paint. Gleam is brought about by many layers of paint; these may be layers similar to landscapes or graphic layers with patterns, and when they merge, the matter ideally produces a gleam which develops from the contrast between the layers."
One can describe the syntactical structure of these paintings as interwoven sentences containing references, insertions, parentheses, flashbacks. At any rate they are not statements expressing certitudes. The colour of the paintings is reduced, diverse, open for conjectures. Sometimes it appears diffuse, misty. This vagueness, this partial velation contributes to the mystery of the gleam - it evokes connotations, offers room for notions which are only suggested.
contemporary art
Looking at the paintings may seem like taking a walk with one´s eyes. A walk is something like a metaphor for these paintings. With good reason. Long walks in the late afternoon, in all kinds of weather, through the forest, across the meadows, past the river. Seeing the same time and again, alert perception, seeing at pace with walking, observing oneself perceive things. In order to discern, accentuate, and comprise. Painting as a different way of seeing.Modern Art
The earlier paintings differ from the new paintings mainly because they contain a notion of landscape, something like a framework for the observer in which he can allow his eyes to roam. The paintings have an integrated pictorial space and are directed into the back by various focal points that lead into the depth of the painting.
The gleam in these paintings appears to be even more distinct as it always has something to do with a relationship with nature, with the elements of air light, water, mist, twilight. The gleam is more likely to come from the depth of the painting and evokes a shimmer on the surface. In the new paintings the gleam seems to float between the layers. Because of these changes in the exploration of the same phenomenon of light, the pictorial space is defined differently, but the pictorial substance and the quest for cognition have remained the same.
The new paintings are painted towards the front, the pictorial space no longer offer the illusion of depth, but it is a level. The special organisation of the pictorial elements, the
Landscape painting
relationship between detail and entity and vice versa have changed. At times it seems as if one can see the earlier paintings in the new ones as if through a zoom. Manifold colour spaces develop, oscillating between the layers and unfolding openly for our perception. The homogeneity of our perception is challenged by this variety of the pictorial space in new paintings.I want to know how painted pictures evolve from seen pictures.
"That is difficult to describe. I do not have a clear picture in mind when I start painting. A painting develops in the process of painting, through reacting on what I see in front of me."
"But you certainly have an idea."
Sfumato
"Roughly; but it consists of everything I have once seen - of paintings I appreciate, of observations, visual experiences imprinted in my memory. I think a painting should evoke memories as well. Even abstract paintings must remind observers of something they have experienced before, otherwise they are dead, just mere paint, and the pictures have no effect.""Does that mean that there has to be something personal that you approach or define?"
"No, I mean experiences everyone can share. I want to evoke memories with optical means, by means of paintings."
"How important is the environment you paint in?"
"That has always been a main aspect - the oscillation of light in the landscape or the air. I keep that up, but now I try to combine the notions I had in my landscapes with different pictorial strategies - for example patterns. But I do not know yet what new space the painting will develop or where memory will take me."
Frits van der Zander
"What is the personal, the individual in your paintings?""Maybe that what was said first is continually qualified by each new layer covering it. I often "unpaint" a layer or take it back. It may be this constant interweaving before a painting is completed, this constant reversal, destruction and renewal. A process of revising and letting things happen until the paintings gleam."
That is what distinguishes these paintings - they are open for various possibilities, there are various connections with reality, with remembered paintings and paintings which develop in new and surprising ways while we look at them. They realize memory, express it in a pictorial language of very personal syntax which stores all suggestions, connotations and assumptions in the complex texture of the paint. This continuous concentration of the artistic exploration of the gleam of the matter proves how important it is to develop a personal focus in order to continue seeing originally and differently and painting this.
This is a type of spiral thinking about visual possibilities with pictorial means, not a hermetic concept.
The gleam of the matter is the memory, the result of pictorial thinking.
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