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until 28.04. | #1848ARTatBerlin | Galerie Brockstedt presents from 24th February 2018 the exhibition “Fiesta in Chinchón” by the artist Rocco Hettwer.
“Our Life – Dramatic snapshots of a movie”
Anyone who has ever seen the pictorial creations of the painter Rocco Hettwer, born in 1964 in Wurzen, Saxony, knows that he is concerned with the exciting staging of the figure in the room. Again and again he lets his characters act on a stage space that is dramatized with light and shadow, thus increasing their expressive power.
He is thus in the tradition of a realism characterized not least by his years at the Weißensee School of Art, but not, as in the Renaissance, for a race against reality, but rather for a personally shaped today ‘s psychogram of the individual, for his Feelings, his needs. And we, the observers, in the encounter with his works unfold individual thoughts through our ever different stories and idiosyncrasies.
The artist himself says of his aim: “Happy if the result has a stimulating world that stimulates the imagination, an incomprehensible character that holds the viewer’s imagination in a constant tension that can not be satisfied by any solutions.” He is obsessed with the idea that art gives the opportunity to put the subjective view of the artist on contemporary reality for discussion.
The dramatic idea runs throughout the artist’s entire work and, in his own view, even enhances the “conviction that acting is true life, and the rest of life is just an artificially extended, meaningless break.” So it’s no wonder that During a visit to Chinchón, near Madrid, the traditional fiesta was spellbinding. There, the bull is driven through the streets in a hunt – he is not killed, but this bustle of the Spaniards as a folk festival has “a certain matter of course or almost casualness in the cycle of the year.” Just this everyday moment interested the artist, who uses him with his masterfully executed ink brush in snapshots on the paper banishes. He brings us, the observer, right into the middle of this fiesta, as if it were a scene from our own everyday life, which he turns into a feast with light and shadow through his artistic eye.
Despite its seemingly classical appearance, it is a message to today’s human being – we understand our lives as dramatic snapshots of a film – captivating yet with a winking artistic and creative distance!
Text: Barbara Brockstedt, February 2018
Rocco Hettwer – Biography
Born in 1964 in Wurzen / Saxony
1979-1982 Abitur and apprenticeship as skilled worker for printing technology, Leipzig
Evening study for painting at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, Dept. of painting with Eberhard Löbel
1990-1995 studied at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee (KHB), with Wolfgang Leber u. Dieter Goltzsche
1995 diploma for “Free Art / Painting”
1996 Master student with Prof. Dieter Goltzsche
1996 scholarship of the German-French Cultural Council; Guest student at the École des Beaux Arts de Bordeaux / France
1997-1998 scholarship of the DAAD for France
since 1999 independent artist in Berlin
2000-2006 murals in Mühlbach, Thallwitz and Nemt in Saxony
2007 study trips to Venice and Paris
2009 Start of cooperation with Galerie Brockstedt
2014 Large solo exhibition in the Städtische Galerie Wurzen on the occasion of his 50th birthday (catalog)
2015/16 study trips to Spain
Vernissage: Saturday, 24th February 2018, 06:00 – 09:00 Uhr
Exhibition period: Saturday, 24th February to Saturday, 28th April 2018
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Image caption: Rocco Hettwer, Courtesy Galerie Brockstedt
Exhibition Rocco Hettwer – Fiesta in Chinchón | Contemporary Art – Kunst in Berlin – ART at Berlin
