Art Düsseldorf15.11.2019–17.11.2019Ana Navas, Veronika Hilger
Sperling at Art Düsseldorf 2019, presenting new gallery artist Ana Navas and Veronika Hilger.
Ana Navas' (*1984, Ecuador) practice is a combination of various art forms, including sculpture, video, painting and performance. In doing so, it focuses on user, design and art objects in the broadest sense of the word. As a sort of researcher, she explores the genealogy - the origin and development history - of such objects. She uses both a historical and a fictional approach to raise questions about the relationship between form and function and between "original" and "copy" of objects. In humorous and inventive ways Ana Navas shows that what we are - or better what we are required to be - is constructed and communicated through simple and seemingly inoffensive objects and behaviors. How is it possible that an object, such as an ironing board, is anchored in the collective memory of millions of people around the world? And how does the meaning of universal forms change in different contexts? To what extent is it possible to come up with an object or idea entirely on your own? Or are they by definition merged elements of things that you have seen before? And if so, to what extent can you actually claim that something is your idea? Who decides whether an object is a piece of art, craft industry or trivial decoration?
At Art Düsseldorf Ana Navas will present a series of assemblages that call attention to the ways in which women and the female body under capitalist patriarchy have oftentimes literally been deprived of their sexuality and femininity. In her conceptualization of these pieces of clothes, the artist had been inspired by books on ‘power dressing’, the practice of dressing in a style that enables women to show their authority in male-dominated political and professional environments.
In her paintings which oscillate between figuration and abstraction, Veronika Hilger (*1981, Germany) addresses classical subjects such as landscape, still life and portrait. The artist does not separate these genres clearly from each other and she does not make it easy for the spectator to decide whether he or she is standing in front of a landscape-like portrait or a landscape that appears to be a still life. Ultimately this decision is not relevant for Veronika Hilger. On the contrary, she seeks answers to fundamental questions concerning the nature and meaning of painting in its formal, technical and conceptual realization. She arranges, moves, layers and alters picture elements through a very slow painting process until the outcome feels ‘natural’ to her. In this way, nature serves to explore the processes and possibilities of painting, not the other way around.
