Stars and light
in a non
happening lost
space painted
A solo show by Dianne Hagen
3 March - 8 April 2023
When we think of abstract art as the opposite of narrative or as having a fair amount of indescribability we enter the realm of Dianne Hagen’s work. Hagen’s career features an extensive range of art practice: installations, sculptures, painting, drawing or short films. What they all have in common is the universal language of symbolic richiami they communicate with.
On the occasion of her new solo exhibition at Lumen Travo, Hagen presents a new series of paintings on linen and drawings on handmade Indian paper, which further develop the visual and ontological approach she has been pursuing throughout her whole career.
Her practice deals with the absence of a moralistic lesson: a provocative approach which brings the focus back to the contemplative nature of art, already meaningful per se, as opposed to the didactic tendency of nowadays’ contemporary art scene.
Abstract and figurative are blurred through means of perspective, hidden and unfolding and through diligent painterly labour. The tension between representation, recognizable elements and abstraction is palpable and
builds a sacred space where decorative patterns are equally important as the clouds in the sky.
The delicate, subdued palette of the past begins to higher its temperature in high-keyed, saturated tints of old-fashioned charm: warm pink tones, succulent oranges, space-deep blue and dominant reds. The organic essence previously seen in Hagen's paintings and installations, with the presence of fabric and metals, has shifted to the rise of a looping, meditative, composition made up of an anti-narrative dance of recurring elements: solitary benches, bedsheets left undone and platforms-like shapes sketched from the absence of paint are here interwoven with patterns of Eastern sensibility, having the artist lived in India for many years.
These new works play with feelings of longing, desire, judgment, power, love and condemnation. They function as portals, windows, where the absence of a singular dominant narrative opens up the perspective to multiple ways of perceiving reality.
When the gaze is caged under one horizon, its freedom is undermined, as it becomes time-oriented. By leaving the narrative behind the freedom grows.
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Since 2006 Dianne Hagen has lived and worked in Amsterdam and Delhi (India). She studied at the Rietveld Akademie and followed the two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
Hagen exhibited her work in a solo show at Stedelijk museum Schiedam; group shows include : STUK museum Leuven, Belgium; Villa Giulia – CRAA Centro Ricerca Arte Attuale, Verbania, Italy; W139, Amsterdam; De Appel, Amsterdam; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Belgium; Melly, Rotterdam.
Together with Sanjeev Sinha (†2020) she organized the international Art &World peace project in the Buddhist pilgrimage village Bodh Gaya in the state Bihar in 2006, 2011 and 2017. Each of these editions culminated with the publication of a catalogue.
Her works are in museums and private collections in The Netherlands, Canada, America, Belgium, France and India.