Volker Hueller

The Déja-vu experience, writes Margit Brehm in her essay on the most recent works by Volker Hüller (b. 1976) deceives the senses. That might have something to do with the artist’s own aims, for example how one should approach the differentiation of the basic questions in painting since the beginning of the twentieth century, leading directly to the dynamic relationship between abstraction and figuration, but also to questions pertaining to the specific treatment of the painting’s surface. Volker Hüller had introduced extraneous materials into the ground of the painting from an early stage and worked them into the surface forms: foils, PVC, fake fur or imitation reptile skin are deployed conditionally as elements of the collage, but actually have veritably become one with the pictures. In this way Volker Hüller also successfully negotiates the game with the fundamental affinity between ornament and abstraction all the way to integration of the human figure into an overall composition.