Sophie von Hellermann

Sophie Von Hellermann took the title “A Perfect Spy” from a novel by John Le Carre, which serves as the starting point and leitmotiv of this exhibition presented by the artist at Vacío 9. Sophie von Hellermann is, first and foremost, a storyteller. It soon becomes obvious that she does not use literary techniques in her narratives. Instead they are conveyed via the exclusive use of plastic media that create an immediate whole that in turn generates a series of multiple options that the viewer can then take onboard and develop further. This is a figurative style of painting whose composition is always the result of an image that pre-exists in her head. Hellermann’s “stories” always come down to us as incomplete. They are fragments, the abstract paragraphs of a far larger story whose outcome almost always remains hidden. The artist knows all too well that mystery is always the essential ingredient for ensuring the continued interest of the reader, of the person looking at a painting. A magical tension coupled with the imagination of the viewer is what provides the perfect ending to her painted narratives. The upshot is an evocative style of painting that has its source in things remembered and that brims with situations experienced in vague places, as Hellermann herself has admitted on occasion. Along the same lines, the technique used by the artist is a blend of the rotundity of the mundane and the ethereal nature of the stimulated sensation, which manifests itself in clearly defined forms that shut in colours that serve to anchor the figure central to the story being told, that are at the same time diluted in a painting style that does away with the use of excessive materials. This mixture of techniques gives Hellermann’s work the disconcerting quality of unfettered, floating memory that is such a characteristic feature of her paintings. Sophie von Hellerman was born in Munich and lives and works in London. She began her art studies in Oxford, England in 1993 before attending the Akademie der Kunst in Düsseldorf, Germany until 1999. She received a DAAD grant to study in London and in 2000 she finished her Masters at the Royal College of Art. En 1995 she became a founder member of the “Hobbypop” Group, made up of artists who studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. They put on numerous art events, and centred their activities in the German city during the nineties. In 1998 they created the Hobbypop Museum. Among the exhibitions held by the group are “Angel Island”, Anvers (2000) and “HobbypopMuseum” at the Langton Art Center in San Francisco (2001). She has held individual exhibitions at the Jablonka Gallery, Cologne, at Charles Foxx in Los Angeles, at the Saatchi Gallery and Vilma Gold in London. Her most important collective exhibitions saw her participate in “Dear Painter Paint Me” at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and in January 2005 she will show her work at Charles Foxx in Los Angeles before it moves on to New York’s Greene Naftali Gallery in May.

Pressetext

Sophie von Hellermann
A perfect spy