Volker Hüller: Bon Voyage

GRIMM is pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Volker Hüller (b. 1976 in Forchheim (DE).

The culture of systematic displacement lives in Hüller's new body of work, a term once coined by Max Ernst to describe the fragmented logic of collage. Current society is hardly more apt to be described in such an abjuring pictorial rhetoric. The paintings in this exhibition are constructed like intricate jigsaw puzzles, bodies and other hints of figuration appear incongruously amid ceramic hands, arms and fingers. In the best of the German Expressionist tradition Hüller's work emphasizes inner feelings and ideas above replicating reality, be they born from personal memory or collective myth.

Volker Hüller's paintings were all conceived during the pandemic and the past year has caused a significant shift, for both artist and viewer, in the way we perceive and the change of pace by which we would normally go about our everyday environment. The works in this exhibition are more detailed and reflective. Hüller employs a more saturated color palette to activate the emotional aspects of his subject matter, and depict heightened states of being. The scenes in his canvases are brought into physical form through the artist's incorporation of brightly glazed, ceramic body parts that are scaled to human proportion. Hüller also uses fabric, straw, and other everyday materials and in some instances he alters the frame of the canvas itself to create a dynamic pictorial terrain. Hüller's bold material exploration, and his skill at locating the intersection between comedic and disturbing, are aspects of his practice that continue to stand out.