LCGA: Tjibbe Hooghiemstra - Night Flight - January 16th - February 25th 2004

Tjibbe Hooghiemstra - Night Flight

Limerick City Gallery of Art
January 16th - February 25th 2004

Official Opening to be performed by
Mr. John O'Donoghue TD,
Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism
Thursday January 15th 2004, 7pm

I'M EXCITED
MOST
BY WHAT
I DON'T KNOW
WHERE DOES
LAND END
OR LAKE BEGIN-
AFTER SNOW?

Tjibbe Hooghiemstra's solo exhibition of drawings and paintings are a considered philosophical engagement with the landscape. The landscape is not established; it is engaged with, scrutinized and rerendered. The quality of the Irish environment, the water, the light and the rain, are all encounters recorded and layered into his work.

The marks made by the artist record journeys; by people, animals and the light and the changes over time as earth, air and water all form a magic that breathes life into the experience of the viewer watching the unfolding of events. The elemental is crucial to the understanding of Hooghiemstra's gripping struggle to both record and to add a personal vitality to the epic quest to engage physically with natural experience. Boundaries between matter and changes by fire or water, the metamorphosis from one form into another and our perceptions of these states are distanced from western scientific rational knowledge. Definitions are loosened visually and an intuitive knowledge grasped from an interaction with the elements is celebrated.

Materials are important to Hooghiemstra. Paper is not just a support, it is an integral constituent of the artworks and through the engagement with collage, the altering and additions to the surface, the work is constructed. The quality of the marks, dry, scratched or on a water saturated surface are vital to convey the essential sense of place. A delicate balance between loosing and finding the image is sought. Hooghiemstra does not make studies or sketches; everything is a non-mediated item, completely of itself. The evocative fragments are forged into a meaningful whole.

Limerick City Gallery of Art is proud to present in association with the Model Arts and Niland Gallery Sligo and the Federesky Gallery Belfast a unique large-scale catalogue of Tjibbe's sensitive drawings to accompany the exhibition. The exhibition catalogue contains nine illustrations with poems by John Brown. The illustrations are the actual size as the original works in the exhibition.

Tjibbe Hooghiemstra is a Dutch artist who has built up many connections in Ireland including, artist in residence at Annaghmakerrig, Cill Rialaig Project in Co. Kerry and he regularly teaches in Ireland at the University of Ulster and NCAD. He previously exhibited at Limerick City Gallery of Art in 1999 and he has work in the National Collection of Contemporary Drawing, Limerick City Gallery of Art. Recent exhibitions were at Galerie Espace Amsterdam, DNA Gallery Provincetown and Scope Los Angeles. His work is included in collections in Tate Gallery and the Stedelijk Museum.