Dieter Hiesserer
10 November 2017 - 19 Januar 2018
“Art is ethical and humane - all great art is like that. For me, art is survival. The work is material, sensory and unpredictable. Illusions and enticements are indestructible.”
Dieter Hiesserer
The work of Dieter Hiesserer (born in 1939) spans more than 50 years of artistic creation. In the 80s, he was described as a “wanderer between the media” by John Matheson and, subsequently, as a “dolphin in the sea of art” by Veit Loers. Hiesserer’s forms of artistic expression - concurrently or alternately - include photography, painting, drawing, sculpture and film. He is well travelled and has frequently spent several months or years in foreign countries, also in order to work there. Artists such as Nam June Paik, Mario Merz and Marcel Broodthaers, among others, rank amongst his companions and friends.
With respect to his paintings and drawings, Annelie Pohlen has remarked that: “What is apparent is Hiesserer’s changes in imagery - the balance between purely flat areas of colour and figurative drawing; it is particularly striking that in the area of technique/style there is a wish to avoid being labelled in any way.” The artist, through all the years, has retained this freedom to newly find his expression over and over again, or to allow the medium to find HIM.
If you want to detect the essence of his work you will inevitably also come across his great oeuvre of drawings using different materials that illustrates, in an exemplary manner, the artist’s mode of operation. At the end of the 90s, a cycle of pastel drawings was created and some of these can be viewed in the current exhibition. In his graphic works you experience an original impression of what the hand is capable of doing when, free from any intentions and in the course of focussed activity, it fills an empty sheet with drawings. The hand creates something that had not previously been there. His drawings do not always depict something specific, or have an aim in respect of content, or an aesthetic scheme worked out in advance -they are rather unpredictable in their development. In that respect, they are closely related to life in its fullness and depths. Dieter Hiesserer once said that: “For me, art is survival”. Hiesserer’s works come straight from the artist - they emerge precisely from the depths of life and the variety constitutes the process that permanently continues, their creation is highly concentrated to deliberately encounter that which is indeterminate.
In addition, the Galerie Clara Maria Sels will be exhibiting paintings, from various creative periods, that capture the characteristic style of the drawings and combine this with flat areas of vibrant colour. The dynamics of the gesture as well as the radiance of the colours unfold their intuitive impact and put us into subtly perceptible moods. Hiesserer’s works affect our subconscious and bring forth stories and memories that, deep within us, have a life of their own. They remind us that the forces that guide us do not always have to emanate from the Logos.
Dieter Hiesserer was born in 1939 in Deggendorf on the Danube. His works have been presented at numerous exhibitions in Europe and the USA. A comprehensive book was published in 2009 by Salon Verlag: Dieter Hiesserer – transponere, with (German) texts contributed by, among others, Ulrich Krempel, Veit Loers and Heike van den Valentyn