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.
HI ALTITUDE 2019 21
@villaheike.berlin 2022
https://www.artrabbit.com/events/hi-altitude-2019-21
exhibition opening:
Thursday 16th June 2022
unpublished Tech Minimal & Deep House
by TOM HUKK, starts 7 pm
a memory of the future
and a precognition of the prehistoric
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 will be first shown from 16th June 2022 till 5th of July 2022 in Berlin at Villa Heike.
price list of available works as .pdf via google.drive for download
installation views Villa Heike Berlin 2022
© KLAUS HU 2022 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
selected works
JOSHUA TREE / S
oil on canvas 160 x 200 cm
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.
AFTER THE CLOUD _ green deal
oil on canvas 160 x 200 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
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.
installation views Villa Heike Berlin 2022
© KLAUS HU 2022 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
NESSUNO VIA
(no one away - niemand weg)
diptych / oil on canvas 80 x 140 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
Vanishing Blue
Painted Blind
As Dusk covers the Studio
Mixing Blue and Black
Yellow net of the stars
Distant space
Deep Time
Without perspective and scale
Myriads
The spider catches my eye
Stretched in the Desert
For performative reasons
Cleansing the White clay
Of its umber Reddish rocks
Orange filled, blinded by the Sun
The same effect as in deep time - Blue
Loss of control and of reference
NAZCA I - V
graphite chalk black wood stain on bristol 250 g
each 70 x 100 cm / framed 80 x 110 cm
ensemble 400 x 110 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
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?
CAVE I & II / STYX
oil on canvas, each 40 x 55 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
NO MILK TODAY
diptych oil on canvas 100 x 160 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
is based on news paper
clipping of ecological disaster
and human
misconduct.
FOR YOU AND ME
oil on canvas each 200 x 160 cm
details
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?
DAKAR windswept
oil on canvas 160 x 200 cm
in memoriam John Baldessari
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
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?
installation view Villa Heike Berlin 2022
© KLAUS HU 2022 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
GRAB A BOARD !
the water´s fine
mixed media / oil on bristol 250 g
70 x 100 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
installation view Villa Heike Berlin 2022
© KLAUS HU 2022 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
ORIGIN OF THE MILKY WAY
oil on canvas 40 x 55 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
…. some 30 years ago, astrophysics and cosmology declared, that our universe´s expansion is slowing down. Today, it is known, that its expansion is even accelerating. The same with the big bang theory, proved by Hubble´s background photo of the universe, its light some billion years old. The big bang theory leaves out, where the energy is coming from, denying physics law, that no energy is lost, only transformed (within our universe´s laws of physics)…Today 28 counter theories of the big bang have evolved, as the most sympathetic to me is the idea of parallel universes / bubbles with different laws of physics and quantum states. Can you imagine, that one or two gaseous bubbles (of universes) with different quantum states have compressed another bubble (our universe) so strong, that it exploded at its most dense quantum state, first forming neutrinos, then forming matter million years later?
THE ORIGIN OF THE MILKY WAY
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1575_30
courtesy National Gallery London
….In Greek mythology, the Milky Way was formed after the trickster god Hermes suckled the infant Heracles at the breast of Hera, the queen of the gods, while she was asleep. When Hera awoke, she tore Heracles away from her breast and splattered her breast milk across the heavens. In another version of the story, Athena, the patron goddess of heroes, tricked Hera into suckling Heracles voluntarily, but he bit her nipple so hard that she flung him away, spraying milk everywhere.
MORNING GLORY
oil / graphite on canvas 100 x 70 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
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?
BENNU / RYUGU
graphite oil charcoal on bristol 250 g
70 x 100 cm / framed 80 x 110 cm
© KLAUS HU 2019 / 21 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
Ryugu is an asteroid about 900 meters in diameter orbiting the sun in a near-Earth orbit. This makes it a good target for space probes. The soil samples were brought to earth by the Japanese probe "Hayabusa-2". The sample container contained just 5.4 grams of rock fragments measuring up to one centimeter. Several research teams recently reported on the results of their analysis in a special edition of the journal "Science". Japanese space probe "Hayabusa 2" Source: https://www.science.org/toc/science/379/6634 Ryugu's molecules may have contributed to the formation of our solar system. The rocks of Ryugu contain thousands of different organic molecules, including amino acids. From the frequency and the exact structure, the scientists reconstructed the history of the small asteroid. Some of the organic matter had already formed in the cold gas cloud in which the solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
First look at Ryugu asteroid sample reveals it is orrganic-rich. Asteroid Ryugu has a rich complement of organic molecules, according to a NASA and international team’s initial analysis of a sample from the asteroid’s surface delivered to Earth by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft. The discovery adds support to the idea that organic material from space contributed to the inventory of chemical components necessary for life.
Bennu´s samples will return to Earth later in 2023.
FICTION
HI ALTITUDE
German / English
included in Book HI ALTITUDE 2019 21
the chase, a prehistoric hunt, a space mission to planet LinaS, the now, that only seems to know the now, a kind of Nazca meets Joshua Tree, or why Bruno Latour´s concept of "Terrestrial Manifesto" may take "the origin of the milky way" of Hera and Herakles of the Greek story into consideration, how the universe has been formed, spilling milk everywhere, while no energy is lost, referring to physical laws, and there may be another universe (and gaseous soup) just forming at this moment, but NOT another planet EARTH.
BOOK, hardcover, 90 pages, col
English / German in alternating 14 chapters
available as print on demand!
60 € / plus costs for shipping
ISBN: 978-3-753159-38-6
Klaus Hu is a German painter, photographer, and (sometimes) curator based in Berlin. He was born in Heidelberg in 1963 and studied anthropology, Germanic and Romance literature at the University of Heidelberg, and photography/stage design at the University of the Arts Berlin. His work often addresses landscape and land use, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial, and he has self-published 6 books on painting and photography. Hu has received numerous awards and grants, including the Berlin Senate fellowship in 1992 and a studio grant at the Santa Fe Art Institute in 2013.
HI ALTITUDE 2019 21
artist statement
“I felt like working & thinking in retrospect (during a pandemic), like entering a space backwards. The body as subject became less and less a signifier in my work, is replaced by landscape or its historical and contemporary fragmented views on landscape. Landscape acts as the body. Vastness and emptiness, ecological conflicts on resources and as breathing entity. Fragile in itself. Color acts as a symbolic signifier, as well as a temporal emotional one and contradicts or emphasizes landscape as vessel and as subject in itself. In comparison with Sean Scully´s emotional moody use of abstract layers of tones, including his harmonic, musical compositional use of color layers, I instead reduced the moody over- and undertones via fragmentary compositions, or by reducing the subject towards one subject depicted (as in current work series CLOUD 9 of 2022 / 23). The current work series may be seen as a study of cloud formations and its uncanny appearances at times, or its juxtaposition in space as a temporal succession of mental states, while the minds projection is left open.
HI ALTITUDE of 2019 21, which has been based on collaged drawings, the archive, newspaper clippings and online data banks is infused by allegoric and symbolic meaning. The final spatial exhibition setting becomes more like jump cuts in film and more like a polyphony with multiple voices, instruments, echoes and feedbacks, whereas CLOUD 9 of 2022 / 23, while organically developing in the studio, represents a single subject in various states of becoming and disappearing.
further reading. lit.
FÉLIX GUATTARI, The Three Ecologies, 1989
DONNA J. HARAWAY, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, 2016
URSULA K. LE GUIN, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986
BRUNO LATOUR, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press, 2018
