Hans Neleman HISTORY ON HOLD

HISTORYONHOLDHANSNELEMAN

HISTORYONHOLDHANSNELEMAN

JULY 19 – SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

CURATED BY NORMA KRIEGER & SUSAN DAVIS-ELEY

Hans Neleman in his studio.

“HISTORY ON HOLD” is an exhibition that features the captivating paintings and collages of international photographer and artist, Hans Neleman.

The notion of ‘History on Hold’ captures a moment frozen in time, reflected in the artworks of a multi-disciplinary artist who draws inspiration from the past to create meaning in the present. Through this concept, Neleman prompts us to pause, reflect, and contemplate, and in turn, invites us to look back for context and forward for purpose once we ‘press play’ again. The title cleverly references the art of photography, which resonates with the artist’s background, where the act of ‘capturing time’ is paramount. In these paintings and collages, the artist employs fragments of sensibilities from the past, evoking a sense of nostalgia and timelessness. The distressed effects on many of the artworks further reinforce this sense of time’s passage. Several works also feature details of sculptures from Roman times. In Neleman’s transformative artistic process, these elements are re-born, and are particularly noteworthy in his surreal assemblage creations. Speaking to the title’s broader context, his hand-torn collages provoke a discourse between abstraction and figuration and the harmony of opposites.

Overall, Neleman’s art is a testament to his creative vision and his commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible with photography and collage. His works demonstrate the power of art to inspire and challenge us, inviting us to see the world in new and exciting ways while contemplating the impact of personal and collective history on our perception of reality.

FOREWORD

In his solo show at Anderson Contemporary, HISTORY ON HOLD, Hans Neleman advances contemporary art on a modernist backbone. With an expressive and brilliantly harmonious construct, Neleman reminds us that we are a past not always recalled, we are pieces until connected, we are a history held in the pages torn from the devotion of experiences lived. Hans masters a beautifully lyrical language to deconstruct and reconnect the lives we chapter to memory to measure in our own, the lives now lived forever in a History on Hold.

It’s been more than 60 years since William Seitz debuted his groundbreaking exhibition “The Art of the Assemblage” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In the exhibition’s catalog, Seitz pinpoints Picasso’s cubist Still Life with Chair as the avant-garde inception of collage and three-dimensional assemblage. The art critic and historian Calvin Tomkins subsequently declared collage “twentieth-century art’s most significant and characteristic innovation” that provided Picasso a battleground to contend artistic purity. Tomkins writes: “By gluing bits of paper, cloth and other fragments of the real world to the surface of their canvases, [Picasso and Braque] expand the attack on art’s imitative function and located “reality” all the more emphatically within the painting itself.” Collage, it seems, armed with what Seitz called its “rhythm of metaphoric destructions and reconstructions”, became art’s catalytic bullshit meter. The real in art, as in life, is not always obvious.

What is clear from Seitz’s showcase is that collage is not for the novice. It’s neither a beginning point, nor an end. It is artistic discovery in its most fluid posture. Almost all of the 140 artists who were included in that exhibit – from Arp and Du buffet to Johns and Motherwell – were multi-discipline artists who used collage to inform and extend their painting and sculpture. Seitz provides a great example of this when describing Willem de Kooning’s iconic paintings of female figures, noting they were composed “with drawings which were “cut apart, reversed, exchanged and otherwise manipulated on the painting.”” Seitz posits: “Juxtaposition – taking form in neocubist fractures and misalignments which often resulted from the use of actual collage techniques – has played a considerable part in de Kooning’s development.” The real in art, as in life, is not always pretty.

Hans Neleman describes his own artistic development as a journey of connected events. Photography connected portraits; portraits connected history; history connected fragments of time and place; and those fragments connect sculpted assemblies to build something new, something real. It is from this new real – this redeemed, reconstructed, reclaimed real – that Neleman also paints. He could not paint this without his photography, without his collage and assemblage, without an experience of connected events. Neleman has lived his art, and because of that it is real.

When Neleman was showing me his inspiration wall filled with pictures and torn prints, he described how much time he spends with his paintings… and the stress he feels when he starts to doubt whether or not he’s getting it right, how to start, when to finish, has it become what he intended it to be… and what I heard in that was painting’s virtue. He had remarked how collage provided the opportunity to not only build an image, but to go back and rebuild it again by simply moving the pieces around. It’s not the same stress. It’s almost as though collage is meant to be disrupted, to do over, to pattern or even dismiss a thought or intention. But painting desires a different truth. It’s not meant to be undone. Like history, like those pages Neleman tears from books to collage a present from the past, painting is an absolute. Painting is the moment of intention that will never be anything else. That’s a very vulnerable reflection for an artist, or anyone for that matter. Perhaps that is why these paintings feel personal. There is nothing there to be undone.

- Patrick Theimer, Art Collector.

RESTRAINT, 2023 oil on canvas, 81 x 66 inches

RECOLLECTION, 2023

oil on canvas, 81 x 66 inches

SURMOUNT, 2023

oil on canvas, 81 x 66 inches

REFRACTION, 2023

oil on canvas, 81 x 66 inches

oil on canvas, 54 x 54 inches

FAINT, 2022

EPICS, 2022 oil on canvas, 71 x 54 inches

COMPANION (Of The Nymphs), 2023 oil on canvas, 81 x 66 inches

THE ANGULATED, 2022

oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

TEASING THOUGHTS, 2021 oil on canvas, 48 x 34 inches

WEIGHT OF THE UNKNOWN DREAM, 2022 mixed media, paper, fabric on wood, 24 x 11 x 8 inches

ODE TO THE GRACEFUL,

2022 paper collage on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

CENTAUR’S GAZE, 2022 paper collage on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

RIPTIDES AND WHIRLWINDS, 2022 mixed media assemblage, 34 x 34 x 2 inches

SLOW SILENCE, 2022 mixed media assemblage, 35.5 x 35.5 x 2 inches

INTO THE TUNNEL GOAT BOY, 2016 mixed media assemblage box, 34 x 24 x 4 inches

APHRODISIAC, 2022 mixed media assemblage box, 34 x 24 x 4 inches

APPEARANCE, 2022

mixed media assemblage box, 34 x 24 x 4 inches

MINDBLOWER, 2022 mixed media assemblage box, 34 x 24 x 4 inches

INSTANT POETRY BURST, 2022 paper collage on canvas, 66 x 66 inches

EARTHLY PARADISE, 2022 paper collage on canvas, 46 x 66 inches

INSTANT POETRY I, 2022 paper collage on canvas, 66 x 77 inches

HUMANITY I, 2022

paper collage on canvas, 46 x 66 inches

HISTORY, 2022

paper collage on canvas, 46 x 66 inches

COMPANION (Pan), 2022 paper collage on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

EMPIRE (of Knowledge), 2022 paper collage on canvas, 71 x 52 inches

DEFIANT, 2023

mixed media collage, 30 x 20 inches

PLAUDIT, 2023

mixed media collage, 30 x 20 inches

STEADFAST MOVE, 2023 mixed media collage, 30 x 20 inches

PERFORMANCE, 2023 mixed media collage, 30 x 20 inches

Hans Neleman (1960) is a Dutch-born American artist based in New Canaan, CT whose interdisciplinary practice includes painting, collage and assemblage. Neleman studied fine arts at Goldsmiths University in London and received a BA from Westminster University and an MA in studio art from New York University. He has worked for over 30 years as an internationally celebrated commercial advertising art photographer and director. He has published three books (Silence, Moko-Maori Tattoo and Night Chicas) and exhibited his works nationally and abroad.

His most recent exhibitions include: ZYNKA Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; MoCA, Westport, CT: Jean Jacobs Gallery, New Canaan, CT; The Art Museum at University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, CT; CUSP/NYC Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Anita Rogers Gallery, New York City; Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York City; Biennale de Lyon France, Lyon, France; and Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

His work is in many private and public collections including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia; The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon, Lyon, France; The Art Museum at University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, CT; Norwalk Community College Art Collection, Norwalk, CT; and The Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT. Neleman has also been featured in numerous international and national newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Newsweek, and Esquire, to name a few. He has lectured and conducted seminars in more than a dozen countries. Neleman taught part-time at his alma mater New York University, the International Center of Photography and the School of Visual Arts. his awards include Kodak Photographer of the Year, American Photographer Magazine Photographer of the Year, the Hasselblad Master title and the Sinar World Image Award for Still Life Photography.