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A Song to the Vitality of Beauty

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A Song to the Vitality of Beauty A Song To The Vitality Of Beauty By Yang Lian Netherlands-born, Berlin-based painter and sculptor Fré Ilgen makes art that speaks to the power of sculptural organization and materials. His sculptures are touched by both stillness and movement and reveal something of the responsiveness of art to the human dynamic. 56 WORLD SCULPTURE NEWS AUTUMN 2013 AUTUMN 2013 WORLD SCULPTURE NEWS 57 ré Ilgen understands in great depth slanting rectangles set so obviously across how aesthetic transformations prog- the surface of the painting: they are di- ress in both sculpture and painting. rectly and explicitly revealed, and so in His sculptures and paintings should the highest degree, they remain hidden. be seen as consciously composed They do not attract the eye (perhaps they Faesthetic wholes permeated with an even subtly repel it) and so they demand awareness of structure and organization, eventual ‘discovery.’ Revealing the world’s sketched out on the shapeless void of structure is the aim of all intellectual in- nothingness. quiry: here, though, we ourselves must My acquaintance with Fré Ilgen’s proclaim it. work had its source in my essay, The Classical: An Intellectual Pursuit, in which ré Ilgen, who was born in 1956, I discussed the work of the Chinese painter has had numerous international Xu Longsen. Xu’s immense ink-wash land- exhibitions and has realized numer- scapes, over 20 meters long and several ous monumental and site-specific meters high, render all other traditional sculptures. Your Long Journey (5 x ink-wash painting technique sterile, but 7F x 40 meters) (2007–2008), which is on he reins in his work before it strays into permanent display at the Heungkuk Life simple abstraction: As the novel concept Insurance building in the center of Seoul, he utilizes and reinvents a whole set of Korea, is his largest. He is represented by techniques to make a contemporary art, Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York, yet it remains susceptible to critique via Hong Kong, and Singapore. In Germany, he the aesthetics of classical landscape paint- Fré Ilgen, Great Fantasy and Fugue, painting, 2010, oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm. Photograph: Matthias works with Beck & Eggeling International Kolb, Berlin. ing. Here, figurative-abstract, technique- Fine Art. concept, and diachronic-synchronic are ernacles, glittering gold candlesticks, and engaged by the hallucinatory turbulence of “I am not interested in the ego of intrinsically linked to generate a structure. portraits from long ago, while plainchant color—the greens, yellows, blues, blacks, the individual, but I am interested in the These horizon-like dashes, by subsuming drifts through the space. “Like in the whites, pinks, ochres, and oranges that position of the individual in the complex time, implement the classical as a type of Baroque, I like to explore relationships hit the viewer in the face like a tsunami flux of reality,” says Ilgen. “This motivates profundity that is capable of verification in, and the dialogue between, two- and engulfing every line, careening off in every me to study in my work a synthesis of through the language of art. three-dimensional artworks. Through a direction. Is this riot of color a landscape? European artistic form-language with Asian Fré Ilgen’s work is entirely different strong and complex visual presence I at- Some nighttime forest pounded by a storm concepts of nothingness, and has spurned from Xu Longsen’s. To enter Ilgen’s Berlin tempt to offer many layers to discover,” out on the Dutch polders? Wait a minute, my interest in European Baroque, Asian studio is to enter a Baroque church at dusk: says Fré Ilgen. though—as my eye gradually adapts, once temples, paintings, and sculptures.” the shifting light from the windows touches As I look at his Great Fantasy and past these explosive waves of color, some- Ilgen understands in great depth many-colored marble, finely sculpted tab- Fugue (2010), my eye is at first entirely how, from the depths of (my? his?) vision how aesthetic transformations progress as if from the seabed, human forms at first in both sculpture and painting. His sculp- unnoticed rise slowly to the surface. Who is tures and paintings should be seen as the woman on the left, her eyes downcast? consciously composed aesthetic wholes, Who is the man her finger directs us to? permeated with an awareness of structure His Christ-like figure, submersed in russet and organization. The sight of these steel brown, seems encrusted in a bloody froth. plates, seemingly about to scream or to A little above him, a hand can be seen sing in sweet harmony, makes us attend pushing something aside with classically more closely to the spatial dynamic as beautiful fingers. A figure sitting sideways they embrace. And in each piece of clay or Fré Ilgen, Gloria, sculpture, 2013, stainless steel, paper clay, acrylic paint, 135 x 135 x 75 cm. Fré Ilgen, has had its turned head changed into a terracotta, as in the shaped formal text of Battle of Evermore – Changes, work on paper, 2013, watercolor, white gouache, 220 x 113 cm. yellow-white gout of flame. But the flame the painting Peace and Noise (2013) or the Photograph: Matthias Kolb, Berlin. shoots out in one direction, and over it, convulsions that extend the fingers of the are transformed, yet nothing is changed. is alive, three dimensional, self-sufficient, as it surveys the scene from high above, infernal demons in Helter Skelter (2011), The materials in Ilgen’s sculp- and presents itself as poetry. another figure stretches out his left hand, there exists a formal dance of stillness tures—heavy as they are, and usually Such a sense of depth, enfolding consoling suffering humanity. and movement, in which all mortal things constructed on an immense scale, with in time, becomes physical in the complex Perhaps what Fré Ilgen has painted their whirling lines penetrating light, swirling motions shaped in sculptures such is the passion and resurrection of Christ and suspended forms—make us forget as Oh, How It Shrieks! (2012) and Nothing set amidst all the tumult of human life. their weight and instead take pleasure Changes, Everything Changes (2011) or in But that other face at the very top, why in this graceful, supple, and responsive the mobile Misty Mountain Hop (2011), and does it so resemble a statue of the Buddha? art. At the touch of the sculptor’s hand, even in site-specific works such as the huge This group of figures suddenly reveals a the form of the sculpture is sketched out sculptures Your Long Journey and Vertigo structure and a connotation in what I had on the shapeless void of nothingness. As (2010–2012). It is very interesting to view taken for a random disorder of line. This in a painting, where the surface may be the sculptures and paintings in an imme- makes the painting’s surface rather like that all surging mayhem while the depths are diate combination, where they fuse into of the oil paintings of da Vinci, Rembrandt, steady and firm, Ilgen’s syntax says: art one whole of motions, as in the group of or Rubens—who Fré Ilgen loves—overlaid is used to illumine deep reality, and is terracotta sculptures with the large triptych as they are by the minuscule punctuation not the mere ornamental play of the sur- Peace and Noise (2013), the combination of Above: Fré Ilgen, Peace and Noise, painting (triptych), 2013, oil, acrylic, and conté crayon on canvas, of the craquelure left by time, and this real. Decoding it is like listening closely the semi-figurative sculpture Gloria (2013) 300 x 600 cm. Photograph: Matthias Kolb, Berlin. Fré Ilgen, Battlefield of Eros and Thanatos, leads us to redouble our efforts in order to to music: as the melodies extend yet do with two smaller sculptures and a larger terracotta group, 2012-2013, each max approx. 40 x 30 x 25 cm. Previous pages: Fré Ilgen, Vertigo, search out the essential meaning implicit not vanish, internal memory endlessly work on paper, the small sculpture So It suspended sculpture, 2010–2012, stainless steel, industrial paint on permanent site on top of each other, approx. 9 x 4 x 3 meters. Bank Kreissparkasse Herzogtum Lauenburg, SparkassenCenter, Geesthacht, in the work. Only at this point did my eye grows deeper until, finally, space enfolds Goes (2013) with large works on paper, or Germany. Photograph: Matthias Kolb, Berlin. suddenly become aware or the series of Fré Ilgen. Photograph: Danny Croucher, Berlin, 2011. time, time flows within space. The space the painting Immigrant Song (2012) with 58 WORLD SCULPTURE NEWS AUTUMN 2013 AUTUMN 2013 WORLD SCULPTURE NEWS 59 the copper sculpture Sweet Melody (2012). Fré Ilgen says, “... having noticed that humans tend to be more interested in looking longer at artworks that are pur- posely made imperfect, and much less at industrially made artifacts, I have realized the importance of the artwork made by the artist’s own hands. Like in the Baroque, or in much of Asian culture, I look for offering the struggle of life in depth, combining and juxtaposing the beautiful with the more negative of life ....” This quotation brings me to under- stand that depth is the word that links Xu Longsen and Fré Ilgen with Chinese and European artistic thought. The points of commonalty are these: First, possession of a tradition: neither Xu Longsen’s ink- wash landscapes nor Fré Ilgen’s Baroque can be the stuff of idle gossip, because both demand rigorous study, in order that technique might penetrate deeply into tradition. Second, each of these artists has brought a unique concept into being.
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