For its second show in the new premises at 11 Church Street Patrick Heide Contemporary Art is delighted to present a selection of photographs, light objects and a large-scale installation by German artist Hans Kotter.
“Colour Rush” is a vibrating journey through Kotter’ s ongoing quest on how to give shape to light. In the artist’s second solo exhibiton in London Hans Kotter’s approach to colour and light tends to be technical, almost scientific.
Once again Hans Kotter turns colour into light and light into matter.
Kotter’ s photographic language originates from macro-shots of light breaking in glass objects. With his macro lens the artist is zooming in on tiny details of glass prisms or drops of oil.
Patrick Heide Contemporary Art especially commissioned the series Organic Colour for this exhibition, where Kotter creates light-boxes and photographs with meandering, flowing shapes, reminiscent of glowing lava or volcanic landscapes. Looking at his Chromatic Plant series, tulip heads or water lilies floating on a chromatic surface come to mind. Nevertheless, the origin of Hans Kotter’s motifs is fully abstract and devoid of any figurative references. None of the photos are digitally retouched after they have been taken. All imagery arises from a combination of coincidences in the production process and the imagination of the human mind.
The chrome plated light boxes and Diasec photographs, sometimes on the borderline between art and design, have a rigorous, smooth and clean appearance - yet somehow Kotter manages to infuse an indefinable tactile sensation. Kotter’s recent work Twins consists of two light boxes with chrome plated mirror fronts that hide the actual sequence of slides in alternating beautiful dense lines of colour on the lateral faces of the object.
Hans Kotter’s most challenging installation Blue line will stretch along the longest gallery wall. Blue Line demonstrates on a large scale how technical rigor can create deeply poetic effects. It displays a blue line of light, made with translucent coloured oil, that appears within and is projected through different media. While running through water, drinking glasses, perspex boxes and other familiar materials, Blue Line redefines the viewer’s perception and interpretation of the daily-life object. Kotter succeeds in finding a way to frame light and render it sensuous.
Born in 1966 in Mühldorf am Inn (Germany), Hans Kotter studied in New York at Art Students League and attended the Media Design Akademie in Munich, Germany. He has exhibited widely in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and New York. His highly successful installation piece “Balance”, a crevice in the floor and walls emanating blue light that seems to cut the space in half, was permanently installed at the Kinetica Museum in London’s Spitalfields Market.
Hans Kotter was recently commissioned to produce a work for the most prominent collection of light art in Europe, the Targetti Collection in Florence. Other recent acquisitions and architectural commissions were from the Deutsche Bundestag (German Parliament) and for the headquarters of Deka Bank (Frankfurt) and E-ON (Regensburg). Hans Kotter lives and works in Berlin.