ENERGY II Painting

works and lives in Hamburg, Germany

(text)installations, photo cut-outs, paintings on lacquered films

Instead of canvas, Ilka Vogler always opts for lacquered film in vivid and glaring colours as a painting surface. In doing so, she purposely confronts the artificial materiality of the high-gloss plastic film with the often lyrically delicate motives: flowers, plants, lizards, mountain or park landscapes, ornamental patterns and tendrils.

While the images of lizards and reptiles result from her childhood remembrances and her interest for the exotic plant and animal world, the Train Ride with an Iguana focuses upon another important stimulus for her artistic creation: travelling.
Travelling time and again to special places, places symbolizing strength and energy to the artist; places, where culture and nature maintain a close relationship.

Under the impression of her regular sojourns in Sils Maria, over the years, she developed the brilliant series of the upper Engadin mountain landscapes. On a bright blue base, she captures the monumental impact of the massifs. In a virtually bold manner, the forms convey the elemental forces of the high mountains in different shades of light. The distinct quality of the lacquered film is utilized in an optimal way: the unpainted glossy surfaces with their evenly flowing texture depict the blue of the sky as well as the mirror-like Sils Lake. The perfect smoothness of the material expresses the deep and transcendental tranquillity of the mountains, an atmosphere often felt to be almost unreal. These particular qualities are in fact reinforced by the choice of material.

Likewise, these trips to "outer places" are always ventures into the artist's "inner spaces". Own experience is confronted with the unknown, the present with the past, fantasy with reality. The intensive exploration of culture, museums, and literature at each destination is characteristic for her approach to travelling and influences her thinking and working: headed again and again for Crete, Paris, Venice, or Egypt. Sketches, spontaneous notes, photographs, recollections of travel experiences are the source, from which her art is drawn. After a stroll through the Dessau-Woerlitz gardens, for instance, she created There is a Place. Before an intensive blue background, between the vertical lines of the dangling plants some reminding of Japanese writing the so-called "Vase House" appears in brilliant white.