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- Ulrich Ahlheim
- DEV, Malerei
- Milou Hermus, Fremdkörper
- Bilder der Vernissage
- Eröffnungsrede (engl.)
- Vita
- Presseecho
- Presseveröffentlichung
- Text zur Ausstellung
- Eröffnungsrede
- REVIEW, Bilder aus 3 Jahren
- form.art II
- 2003
- 2002
- 2001
Fremdkörper
Naked human figurines populate the recent and new artworks by visual artist, Milou Hermus. They shamelessly take possession of the picture plane by walking, sitting in strange exhibitionistic poses. Impertinently penetrating the surface through the margins, jumping up and down between the lines of the columns like animated little animals, incarnated punctuation marks.
The abstract, monumental forms of the visual composition attempt to restrain these strange bodies – and, when this appears to be of no help whatsoever, they are forced back to their places through linear ideography – scratches, crosses, shadings, streaks, scripting.
Those ‘intruders’, these weird bodies: “Fremdkörper”; where do they come from?
In Milou Hermus’ artwork of the past twenty-five years the figurative aspects seemed to have disappeared all together; a more lyric, colourful abstraction predominates.
What is the matter?
Some years ago – during a working holiday in Ireland – Milou came in contact with the Irish culture, the Irish/ Celtic illuminated manuscripts in particular. One story fascinated her exceptionally: the peculiar tale of the Irish Saint Brandan. This fascination grew to such an extent that she even travelled to Vienna in order to see the original cartoon strip from the Middle Ages with her own eyes. Milou is completely sold, she dreams about her own ‘Brandan’, her own story in pictures: a new visual adventure.
Suddenly, years later, the Irish adventure nearly forgotten, these small, naked, villainous female bodies strike like the proverbial little devils, out of the blue – at least, so it seems -.
That is the way how it works.
Visual artists suffer, stronger than most, from the phenomenon so beautifully called ‘ the memory of the imagination’. The memory of artists almost crashes under the accumulation of visual material that consciously, unconsciously, unwilling and sometimes even unknown – ad random – fixes itself in the mind through the years.
At awkward, often impossible moments they suddenly impose themselves. You can hardly control them. If you admit just one, the rest – unbridled and associatively –will follow.
This ‘burden’ is at the same time an inexhaustible source of images without which whatever work of the visual artist will be impossible.
That is the way it works with Milou Hermus.
We, the beholders, on occasion have the opportunity to witness such an eruption of images, such a change at first hand: an unique and exceptional experience.
An experience: familiar and at the same time foreign, reliable and yet obscure, on the one hand formal and scientific, on the other hand magic and elusive.
Mireille Houtzager
Eindhoven: May 16, 2004.
Naked human figurines populate the recent and new artworks by visual artist, Milou Hermus. They shamelessly take possession of the picture plane by walking, sitting in strange exhibitionistic poses. Impertinently penetrating the surface through the margins, jumping up and down between the lines of the columns like animated little animals, incarnated punctuation marks.
The abstract, monumental forms of the visual composition attempt to restrain these strange bodies – and, when this appears to be of no help whatsoever, they are forced back to their places through linear ideography – scratches, crosses, shadings, streaks, scripting.
Those ‘intruders’, these weird bodies: “Fremdkörper”; where do they come from?
In Milou Hermus’ artwork of the past twenty-five years the figurative aspects seemed to have disappeared all together; a more lyric, colourful abstraction predominates.
What is the matter?
Some years ago – during a working holiday in Ireland – Milou came in contact with the Irish culture, the Irish/ Celtic illuminated manuscripts in particular. One story fascinated her exceptionally: the peculiar tale of the Irish Saint Brandan. This fascination grew to such an extent that she even travelled to Vienna in order to see the original cartoon strip from the Middle Ages with her own eyes. Milou is completely sold, she dreams about her own ‘Brandan’, her own story in pictures: a new visual adventure.
Suddenly, years later, the Irish adventure nearly forgotten, these small, naked, villainous female bodies strike like the proverbial little devils, out of the blue – at least, so it seems -.
That is the way how it works.
Visual artists suffer, stronger than most, from the phenomenon so beautifully called ‘ the memory of the imagination’. The memory of artists almost crashes under the accumulation of visual material that consciously, unconsciously, unwilling and sometimes even unknown – ad random – fixes itself in the mind through the years.
At awkward, often impossible moments they suddenly impose themselves. You can hardly control them. If you admit just one, the rest – unbridled and associatively –will follow.
This ‘burden’ is at the same time an inexhaustible source of images without which whatever work of the visual artist will be impossible.
That is the way it works with Milou Hermus.
We, the beholders, on occasion have the opportunity to witness such an eruption of images, such a change at first hand: an unique and exceptional experience.
An experience: familiar and at the same time foreign, reliable and yet obscure, on the one hand formal and scientific, on the other hand magic and elusive.
Mireille Houtzager
Eindhoven: May 16, 2004.
