HI ALTITUDE 2019 / 21 at Villa Heike Berlin 2022
HI ALTITUDE
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21
at VILLA HEIKE BERLIN 2022
a memory of the future
and a precognition of the prehistoric.
painting, that connects the wired digital brain
with distant features, locations and rituals.
who would deny,
that the genome editing process,
abandoned bombing test sites
or the astronauts space capsule
are not so different
from the fire and its shadows
inside the prehistoric cave.
Landscape, figuration and abstraction do mingle in the new series of paintings by Klaus Hu, based on recycled drawings and collages. Shown are distant landscapes and prehistoric geoglyphs. Are the images a premonition or do they represent a memory? A momentum of standstill or signs of restart? Contrasted in the exhibition space of Villa Heike, painting becomes a narrative refuge as shelter and the stage of multiple references and geographies
The paintings, graphites and collages developed from 2019 to 2021 have been first shown from 16th June 2022 till 5th of July 2022 at Villa Heike in Berlin .
available works for collection as .pdf via google.drive for download
could as well be installed in a ZEN monastery, as well as in a baroque castle full of historical artefacts. Landscape as longing, and here especially as a truly Californian desert landscape resembles a state of mind, that seems both empty and full. As I have experienced this state of vast space myself, although only in a glimpse of duration, this painting may spark its unrest or silence if requested. Its collage style of the Joshua Tree that has named a landscape or vice versa, is a true flower / plant representation how branches of galaxies are seen by Hubbles telescope. So there is the question, how / if organic life on earth resembles larger structures in the macrocosm of the universe and vice versa. This cannot be deciphered via theory, via chemical alchemy or via space exploration. This may only be explored via metaphorical and metaphysical speculation.
A precognition of the prehistoric and a memory of the future, how lockdown / pandemic and climate crisis, including over use of resources may be interwoven. Is landscape a historical or a contemporary quest for reflection? Is it of solitude, or ist it of spiritual freedom? An ongoing economic and political crisis for exploitation? My own 2 / 4 hands focus on this gap between this condition inside the prehistoric cave and the astronauts space cabin. Its not an easy ride. Its a jump into unknown territory.
(no one away - niemand weg)
composed of Nazca features, resembling large geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving differently colored dirt exposed. Juxtaposed here with features / petroglyphs discovered in caves of Spain / Altamira and Lascaux / France. Sometimes contemporary bombing test ranges resemble geoglyphs....
oil on canvas each 40 x 55 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
Indigenous land rights and climate wars will follow?
Is there a sense of freedom while color surrounds the body? Or is it the action of applying paint in a slow process? Speed and slowness are relative. So are memory and precognition. A presentiment of what has already happened in time to come and what may happen again in a cycle remembered…Who´s afraid of red, yellow and blue?
As in May 2019, there came this NY times article to my mind: “Get ready for baobab smoothies” and “Grab a board, the water´s great”, when there was no pandemic, and travel and exploration seemed not only a luxury for the wealthy. Now in 2021 with travel restrictions, self censoring and amid lack of vaccines not only locally but globally, and further spread of a virus, I have no clue, how images, my mind and staying at home may lead to inspiration. I´m not a fan of ZOOM, nor classic telephone friending, so this painting remains, urging for destinations for local and cosmopolitan experience, after the pandemic has been mastered. After. We´re still in it. Thats the fact. So, any news, despite the common sense? or just Studio time and staying at home?
THE ORIGIN OF THE MILKY WAY
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1575_30
courtesy National Gallery London
Re cycling old drawings and collages during a pandemic. Images and newspaper clippings of ecological disasters and human misconduct. An old drawing of an erection. Body and mind. Body and landscape. Body and economy. The old dichotomy. Where the one suffers, and the other makes profit. How long has this been going on? How long will this be going on?
70 x 100 cm / framed 80 x 110 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
https://scitechdaily.com/daring-rescue-of-monumental-asteroid-mission-heres-how-engineers-pulled-it-off/
ISBN: 978-3-753159-38-6