NAN HOOVER
Early video and late print works
Opening 4 April 17.00 – 20.00
performance by Christina Della Giustina
'Could you return it to me afterwards please?'
Nan Hoover (1931-2008) began her artistic career as a painter. In 1969 she settled in Amsterdam where, in 1973, she started exploring the then nascent medium of video. Inspired by Rembrandt and fascinated by the transparency of light and shadow, she transformed contrast and emotion into time and space. The abstractions in the transition from subject to surroundings are reminiscent of landscapes, even when her own body is the subject, as in one of her earliest works, “Movements in Light” (1975), which will be shown at Soledad Senlle Gallery. Nan Hoover’s pioneering work was recognised early on, with exhibitions in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Documenta 6 and 8.
The series 'Watching Out', a trilogy (1983, 3 x 3 polaroid stills from the similarly titled video installation) casts an intense, breathtaking light upon her world of appearing and disappearing. Light and shadow transform her face, the gaze directed outwards, while she grants the spectator a glimpse of the underlying reality.
At the end of the Eighties she took up drawing again. The drawings shown in the exhibition are intimate, compelling and unmistakably her own. Using charcoal and pastels, she creates an optimum tension between light and dark, abstraction and reality, exploring the boundaries between the deepest black and the (sparse) brightest light.
The series 'Ominous Mountains' from 2003 (Echigo-Tsumari, Japan) comprises 5 large-format prints that make use of a sort of ‘pointillism’ created through an extreme blow-up of the photographic grain. Here, too, one is left searching, or wandering, in an unfamiliar terrain. The image does not let itself be easily caught in a single glance.
As she herself once said: 'I am a painter - everything I do is seen through the eyes of a painter. I only use different brushes from time to time.'
Nan Hoover discovered Soledad Senlle Gallery during an exhibition by her friend and studio colleague Christina Della Guistina. It was her express wish to make an exhibition in this space. The exhibition has come about in close dialogue with Christina Della Guistina. Soledad Senlle Gallery is honoured to be allowed to present these works in full accordance with Nan Hoover’s wishes.
*could you return it to me afterwards please?” by Christina Della Giustina.
Live performance with sound and text, based on Christina Della Giustina’s actual and imaginary conversations with Nan Hoover. They met each other in 2002 and developed a strong professional bond and a genuine friendship.
This exhibition has partly been realised in association with
Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst Montevideo/Time Based Arts (Amsterdam)
Gallery Sebastian Fath Contemporary (Mannheim)
In connection with the following exhibitions
S e b a s t i a n F a t h / c o n t e m p o r a r y
Nan Hoover
Art Amsterdam - RAI
13 – 17 May 2009
C e n t r u m K u n s t l i c h t i n d e K u n s t
Nan Hoover “Lightscapes’
Retrospective
Emmasingel 31, Eindhoven
7 February – 7 June 2009
Nan Hoover (USA) Movements in Light, 1975
Video, 16'37'',
Sloterkade 171, Amsterdam
'Movements in Light' is one of Hoover's earliest video pieces. It is almost entirely made out of decorated movements of her own body which she followed on a monitor. Movement, the body, light and time play a crucial part in Nan Hoover's work. She seeks to convey the phase which precedes reality, the phase in which the process of thinking is still an open creative activity. A close up is unclear, yet becomes clearer as the camera focuses. Closed lips, the contours of the upper lip, the tip of the nose, the dark shadow of a nostril appear against the contrasting lightness of the foreground which is bathed in light. A fade transforms the image. A further close up reveals the abstract surface of the skin; the gradual bat of an eyebrow is the only other movement eanating from the body. The slow movement and light reveal new formations of her body bathed in light: a face a close up of a hand with deep lines that are pronounced by the shadows they create. The camera moves slowly and captures more movement, more body, more light. The images seem internal and somewhat distant like a dream which bears images of reality but visually appears so removed from it.
Netherlands Media Art Institute, Stefan Aquilina
Copyrights: All rights reserved (c) LIMA
Nan Hoover (USA) Movements in Light, 1975
Video, 16'37'',
Sloterkade 171, Amsterdam
'Movements in Light' is one of Hoover's earliest video pieces. It is almost entirely made out of decorated movements of her own body which she followed on a monitor. Movement, the body, light and time play a crucial part in Nan Hoover's work. She seeks to convey the phase which precedes reality, the phase in which the process of thinking is still an open creative activity. A close up is unclear, yet becomes clearer as the camera focuses. Closed lips, the contours of the upper lip, the tip of the nose, the dark shadow of a nostril appear against the contrasting lightness of the foreground which is bathed in light. A fade transforms the image. A further close up reveals the abstract surface of the skin; the gradual bat of an eyebrow is the only other movement eanating from the body. The slow movement and light reveal new formations of her body bathed in light: a face a close up of a hand with deep lines that are pronounced by the shadows they create. The camera moves slowly and captures more movement, more body, more light. The images seem internal and somewhat distant like a dream which bears images of reality but visually appears so removed from it.
Netherlands Media Art Institute, Stefan Aquilina
Copyrights: All rights reserved (c) LIMA
Nan Hoover (USA) Movements in Light, 1975
Video, 16'37'',
Sloterkade 171, Amsterdam
'Movements in Light' is one of Hoover's earliest video pieces. It is almost entirely made out of decorated movements of her own body which she followed on a monitor. Movement, the body, light and time play a crucial part in Nan Hoover's work. She seeks to convey the phase which precedes reality, the phase in which the process of thinking is still an open creative activity. A close up is unclear, yet becomes clearer as the camera focuses. Closed lips, the contours of the upper lip, the tip of the nose, the dark shadow of a nostril appear against the contrasting lightness of the foreground which is bathed in light. A fade transforms the image. A further close up reveals the abstract surface of the skin; the gradual bat of an eyebrow is the only other movement eanating from the body. The slow movement and light reveal new formations of her body bathed in light: a face a close up of a hand with deep lines that are pronounced by the shadows they create. The camera moves slowly and captures more movement, more body, more light. The images seem internal and somewhat distant like a dream which bears images of reality but visually appears so removed from it.
Netherlands Media Art Institute, Stefan Aquilina
Copyrights: All rights reserved (c) LIMA
Nan Hoover (USA) Movements in Light, 1975
Video, 16'37'',
Sloterkade 171, Amsterdam
'Movements in Light' is one of Hoover's earliest video pieces. It is almost entirely made out of decorated movements of her own body which she followed on a monitor. Movement, the body, light and time play a crucial part in Nan Hoover's work. She seeks to convey the phase which precedes reality, the phase in which the process of thinking is still an open creative activity. A close up is unclear, yet becomes clearer as the camera focuses. Closed lips, the contours of the upper lip, the tip of the nose, the dark shadow of a nostril appear against the contrasting lightness of the foreground which is bathed in light. A fade transforms the image. A further close up reveals the abstract surface of the skin; the gradual bat of an eyebrow is the only other movement eanating from the body. The slow movement and light reveal new formations of her body bathed in light: a face a close up of a hand with deep lines that are pronounced by the shadows they create. The camera moves slowly and captures more movement, more body, more light. The images seem internal and somewhat distant like a dream which bears images of reality but visually appears so removed from it.
Netherlands Media Art Institute, Stefan Aquilina
Copyrights: All rights reserved (c) LIMA
Nan Hoover (USA) Ominous Mountains No I, 2003
Photography,
Ominous mountains No.I (Echigo-Tsumari, Japan), 2003, photobased inkjetprint, 1/5, 204 x 119 cm
Nan Hoover (USA) Ominous mountains No V, 2003
Photography,
Ominous mountains No.II (Echigo-Tsumari, Japan), 2003, photobased inkjetprint, 1/5, 165,5 x 124,5 cm
Nan Hoover (USA) Ominous Mountains No III, 2003
Photography,
Ominous mountains No.III (Echigo-Tsumari, Japan), 2003, photobased inkjetprint, 1/5, 156,5 x 124,5 cm
Nan Hoover (USA) Watching Out - a trilogy, 1986
