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until 11.05.| #4147ARTatBerlin | Galerie Brockstedt shows from 17. February 2024 the exhibition ” Die schönen Tage ” (The beautiful days) with paintings and drawings of the artist Rocco Hettwer.
As in previous exhibitions of his paintings at the Brockstedt Gallery, the figures acting in almost empty rooms cast a spell over us with their sometimes dramatic poses, luring us onto their very personal stage of life to decipher the riddle of their expressive gestures and facial expressions. Painterly, finely graduated colour gradations and dramatic contrasts between light and shadow counteract the tense silence, even speechlessness, between his main characters: girls, women and men of a youthful age. What they all have in common is a deep seriousness, a helpless, sometimes desperate inward gaze that seems to contradict the title of this exhibition “The Beautiful Days”. Or were they all melancholically caught up in the memory of a paradise they had “lost”? What were they searching for? Despite the scenes charged with erotic pathos, there seems to be more at stake here than the loss of sexual innocence. Had they lost the courage to communicate with each other about it and to search together for a new path that they could actively and hopefully shape?
Rocco Hettwer, Der Dorn (The Thorn), 2022,
Oil on Canvas, 140 x 90 cm, Photo: Falko Hettwer
Rocco Hettwer himself on his goal: “Happy if the result has a world of stimuli that stimulates the imagination, an incomprehensible character that keeps the viewer’s imagination in constant tension that cannot be satisfied by any solutions.” He is obsessed with the idea that art provides the opportunity to put the artist’s subjective view of contemporary reality up for discussion. For despite their initially seemingly classical depiction, his pictorial compositions have a message for us people of today.
Rocco Hettwer, Hostel Home I, 2018,
Oil on Canvas, 70 x 60 cm, Photo: Falko Hettwer
The painter, who was born in Wurzen, Saxony, in 1964, thus stands in the tradition of a realism characterised not least by his years at the Weißensee art academy, but which is not – as was once the case in the Renaissance – about a race against reality, but about a personally shaped contemporary psychogram of the individual, their sensitivities, their hardships. And we, the viewers, in turn develop individual thoughts through our different histories and influences when we encounter his works.
Rocco Hettwer, Maria und Jan, 2023,
Oil on Canvas, 180 x 120 cm, Photo: Falko Hettwer
These disturbing images challenge us, especially in these unsettling times, to remember “the beautiful days” that each of us carries alive within us in individual images. What made them so radiant? What was it about them that made them so worth living?
Rocco Hettwer, Betrachtung eines räumlichen Dramas II (Observation of a spatial drama II), 2022,
Oil on Canvas, 140 x 140 cm, Photo: Falko Hettwer
If we all reflect on this positive personal ideal together and talk about it openly, we can find a path worth living for our future with concentrated strength and newfound confidence.
The artist’s cheerful watercolours celebrate the play of light on every detail with a lightly curved brush: We only have to perceive the beauty consciously and appreciatively.
Text: Barbara Brockstedt
Opening: Saturday, 17. February 2024, 6pm until 9pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 17. February until Saturday, 11. May 2024
To the Gallery
Image caption: Rocco Hettwer, Carmen (Studie-Räumliches Drama I / Study of a spatial drama I), 2014, 45 x 30 cm, Oil on Canvas, Photo: Falko Hettwer
Exhibition Rocco Hettwer – Galerie Brockstedt | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
