Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders, Bergisch Gladbach-Wandelhalle 3
Ines Hock – Line to Line
„Foyer“ is an exhibition series on the 2nd floor of the Municipal Galerie Villa Zanders, who – starting from the central hall – dedicated positions of the drawing. At irregular intervals, individual artists or groups are presented, which represent current trends in this medium. For a long time the drawing is moved into the focus of interest , numerous artistic personalities work exclusively in this medium, which is no longer „serving“ is used, but self-confident and independent in addition to painting, sculpture, photography and new media is.
2003 Ines Hock was „7 x pure color“ represented in the exhibition with their delicate paintings on canvas at the City Gallery. Even then, it was known that she also records.
For some years you can now see almost exclusively works on paper by Ines Hock: Drawings in various formats, executed with graphite or colored pencil, watercolors and etchings. For Ines Hock painting and drawing are not two entirely different means of expression.
„It ’s more like the drawing give it always, until 2005, I show them. The drawing is a very important part of the artistic work, because it allows a kind of immediate concentration. The drawing designs not, she is independent. At the same time, the techniques of painting and drawing and the resultant spatial works fertilize. The handmade papers I draw the entire surface on the format oriented. I put together examples and the sheet, the face in the scenic sense. In contrast to the painting could also understand the drawing so that the white of the paper stops, comes to the fore. The viewer can see through the drawing to another level.“
Numerous characteristics of the painting by Ines Hock – an obscuring the scene, a cloud density and an almost immaterial pending job of color – find correspondences in the drawing. One has the impression this leaves marked with pencil or crayon are excerpts from an endless continuum.
The artist works in the series of works, which they further developed over the years. They changed if necessary the paper or the pen. Basically, it is characterized with a soft pencil, which she uses for the entire drawing and in between acute. This change can be read in the drawings also: from hard, fine to stronger line until a new sharpening operation, the line can begin again hard and clear. Similar to the reading direction is characterized by the artist usually from top left. In certain segments, microcosms comparable, they compressed a certain movement to hatching and then works its way only to the right. Her artistic work is procedural . „With each stroke the blade is changed again.“
The size of the blade is crucial to the working position of the artist. Smaller sizes are before her on the table, larger paper attached to the wall and changed the height several times to draw in front of it while standing and sitting. Just because she is always focused only on a small part of the drawing, Ines Hock describes its operation as an „updating“. This makes the principle of „coincidence “ also an important role. „By that I mean the small shifts in the Subtle. An image takes on a different appearance, because I compose it. I am working so intensely with the process, and yet the concept is as it were modulated by the actual activity in the space of chance. „
After the pure graphite drawings followed by papers that Ines Hock lined with gray crayons, there are only a dozen Polychromos grays. And only after that followed multicolored crayon drawings. Similarly, the use of color took place in the watercolor painting that the artist uses since 2006 increased: first watercolor drawings from gray and black tones, the executed with the pen drawings with their internal structures from two-dimensional microcosms goods Ines Hocks built, comparable, comes to 2010 a wider range of blue and turquoise tones added. This puts the artist in tiny brush strokes on the paper, so that at first the horizontal and then in games also dominates the vertical structure in limitless shades. The leaves are reminiscent of scores that want to be heard and felt . But even the light plays a very important role. Density and less densely populated areas, sometimes just a touch of pigment on paper, this leaves vibrate and produce a poetic mood.
IH: „images generally almost come from our new world of pixelation. Today we have other images. We see other images, we produce other images. The seemingly look the same then something completely different – if you have a near vision or distance vision. Everyone has their perception, a learned scheme as it assesses colors, perspective experiences how he sees. In this respect, I admit only a clue, working very subjective in my inner imagination. The fine distinctions in the juxtaposition focus the gaze reflexively to one’s own perception without being redundant.“
Ines Hock reflected again and again the changing viewing habits: Seeing itself, the images – experience based on cultural influences that have changed, especially in the last two decades due to the changes in media. „What I also find it interesting how we see images. How do we learn to read images, we get a little way through our culture provides, but through the Internet we get to see pictures without context, we can not place. It is produced more and more pictures. We do not know what is then obtained from it. Culturally. Without ranking.“
It challenges the viewer with their meticulous and detailed drawings. Prompts you for viewing from different angles and positions, and offers a variety of barely – ending succession of fine lines. Are there parallels to the segmentation of the screen in pixels, so their strokes oppose but also the artificial pixelation, because there are drawn by hand lines. In its horizontality – and this is still so short – they are an expression of calm and conscious concentration. And only in the addition of these horizontal lines, a dynamic verticality can be constituted, which appears in the overall context. In fact, it is more or less parallel – run lines that bring the sheet only through the different chromaticism to vibrate and flashed moiré effects. What matters in the pencil drawings of the pressure and the strength of the stroke, takes over in the watercolor drawings of both the color and the amount of ink on the paper.
Just the change from near and far vision provides the reassurance and guidance in these watercolors. Are they also completely non-representational, made up of only a few centimeters long fine brush strokes, so they evoke but memories of landscapes, can appear representational paintings, which evaporate in the next moment into yet another micro- universes, which one believes to recognize, to be working.
In the group of works swatch watercolors incurred since 2012, to connect two familiar work attitudes: on the one hand the already 2007 used in the mural and also used in works of colored foils additive use of color patches is updated further, on the other hand, the fine strokes of watercolor drawings transform to larger blocks of color: the result is radiant watercolors, in which transverse rectangular color fields are placed together in a clear structure in rows. The relatively large and irregularly aufscheinende amount of visible white paper highlights this close to drawing as opposed to full-scale painting. Ines Hock distinguishes very clearly between working with the pen and the work with the brush. „The color is simply a seduction. A bigger game. So I have a 2008 exhibition titled „Jeu de couleur“ realized. The drawing seems to me the way from the head to the hand of sensitive map.“
The swatch crayon drawings were created parallel to the watercolors. They are due to the attitude that the artist now something „composed“. It’s like an investigation. As a comparison. Eklatant I find that the drawings actually seem to have a greater differentiation in the brightness values than the watercolors – that one would not really expect.
In addition, it is an entirely different way of working: I put color swatch next swatch, but nevertheless it’s a different relationship with the paper. The white of the paper is set in the drawing opposite the painting in a different relationship. It’s just a drawing where the crayon digs into the paper while in watercolor, the color flows. What comes out is something else entirely. It is also something conceptually quite different than in painting. There is nothing rigid. Painting is complex and complicated.“
Especially the large format pencil drawings draw the viewer into the spell, because you can hardly refrain from the ratio of the delicate single stroke to the total area. The time-consuming devotion to the drawn line has not only meditative qualities, but calls for a strong inner concentration and a rising and becoming one with the controlled motion, which in turn transmits to the viewer. In the flare brighter and by – exposed zones worrying rooms and transcendent width open.
( The statements are based on a conversation with the artist in March 2014)
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Thanks to the artist and the gallery + Castle e.V. for their support. Publisher Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders, Bergisch Gladbach, www.villa-zanders.de, Exhibition Design, text Petra Oelschlägel, photography, design Michael Wittassek, printing Kettler, Bonen , © artist and authors for Ines Hock, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, ISBN 978-3-939227-34-2