Volker Hüller

VOLKER HULLER March 24 – April 27, 2013 | 11 Rivington St & 195 Chrystie St, NY

Eleven Rivington is pleased to present an exhibition of large-scale hand-coloured etchings, portrait paintings, mixed-media collages and sculpture in various materials by Berlin-based German artist Volker Hüller. The exhibition is on view at both gallery locations from March 24 – April 27, 2013. This is the artist’s eleventh solo exhibition and his third in New York with Eleven Rivington.  The artist is the subject of a recent hardcover monograph, with full color reproductions, and text by Margrit Brehm and Daniel Kunitz, published by Snoeck in 2012. 

Hüller’s densely atmospheric and crudely formed two and three-dimensional scenes offer an emotive world populated with imagined figures and tableaus. In them, he records and presents the seemingly humdrum side to everyday life as fragmentary excerpts.  Three recent large-scale collages will be presented at the Rivington Street location, composed of figures set in dark interiors using a palette of deep blacks and dingy grays; together they intimate a sacred and muted air, while the carefully worked surfaces and distressed gestures hint at a concealed narrative.  At Chrystie Street is an installation that features the breadth of Hüller’s wide ranging practice, including monumental hand-coloured etchings; figurative sculpture in clay, concrete, and bronze; and intimately scaled figure paintings.  These latter canvases – featuring toxic yellows and burnt orange over inky blacks–punctuate the exhibition.  In much of Hüller’s works, the paradigm of escaping and playing with the notion of time becomes an energizing principle. They shoulder the weight of the past that is constantly present in the artist’s oeuvre - but these long-ago echoes are not to be misunderstood as significant burdens, feeling more akin to a blurry deja vu, approximating a contemporary, perhaps broken, mirror.   

Volker Hüller was born 1976 in Forchheim, Germany and currently lives and works in Berlin.  He studied under painter Norbert Schwontkowski at the Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg and was recently in residence at Steep Rock Arts in Washington, CT (2012).  His exhibitions include individual shows at Timothy Taylor, London (2010, 2013); Produzentegalerie, Hamburg (2009, 2012); Eleven Rivington, NY (2009, with Salon 94; and 2011); Grimm Fine Art, Amsterdam (2009, 2012); and group shows at Saatchi Gallery, London (2011) and the Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg (2010).