– Heinz Hugel –

Heinz Hugel:  „The Last Tree“ – – – Found piece of wood on hardboard, 50 cm x 60 cm, painted with blackboard-color – – – 2000, Bremen (Germany)

The Last Tree…

The work “The Last Tree” of Heinz Hugel (HH) is determined by an object stuck on hardboard painted black of the size 50 cm x 60 cm. This, what it is, cannot be identified immediately at all! Alone the title of this work refers to wood of a tree…

Something like a stripe which is determined of graphic structures goes up in the middle of this wood object from below. These structures go into horizontal and vertical direction with filigree lines which are standing out from brown areas breaking through irregularly in their lighter color in different direction and shape. Those are these brown places breaking through which most likely remind of wood…

There then are vertical structures still running there parallel to each other in dark gray on this central reservation above on the right.

It can be anticipated that this change must have been caused by a slow and steady influence to the living wood. That is a change which discloses this how such a stable structure must have interwoven itself times ago with determined growth fiber by fiber! It is the life-will itself achieving – millimeters by millimeters – the prototype of one’s own (according to one’s inner “program”) and with that helping to get this one to a real existence. The “inner program” absolutely is able to provide an existence with powerful size and stately height!

All this surrenders the segment, the central reservation, going vertically.

On the right and on the left of it another segment follows respectively on. But the remained traces speak a completely different language! There had happened intense injuries there which had torn off parts from the remaining rests of the outer segments. The frayed remains allow this assumption.…

A tree had been destroyed! But we know nothing about how it happened, or why…

This, what this tree-remains tells Heinz Hugel had expressed with the title “The Last Tree”.

Many an observer of that time (2000) may have regarded such a statement as exaggerated. Nowadays, 15 years later, the danger has certainly got more obvious for the existence of ancient trees. Simultaneously, there are today but also broad endeavors, with the aim to help nature to get its right again…

But there is somebody to whom it has (or had) become reality finding no more trees. – This statement came to me in my mind in regard on the origin of the wood:

Certainly today, I see in front of me my husband returning back to the gallery pro art while fetching from his bag something wet and dripping to show it to me. It had been this strange piece of wood, this “tree remains”, absorbed by water being dripping wet, which he had got out there. He had found this water-object behind the Neustadt’s Station on a track section having no longer been used. It had been located in a track-bed filled with puddle-water there. (The gallery pro art could use the former station buildings of this Bremen district at that time.)

HH then had made preparations so that his find could dry at leisure. And I also had resumed my own work. After almost two weeks he then had put this “wood-document” into scene: The deep, but mat black of the surroundings lets the fine structures, “leached out”, glitter in light white and almost silvery when being lit. And the grown structures described above become fine graphic set tongues so. These strengthen the contrast between the slowly grown and the painful injuries of one single moment!

Only while I was preparing my interpretations, it fell for me like dandruff of the eyes:

This something being dripping wet came directly from the world of the beaver!

Exactly, it is the beaver which found, or still finds, no more a living-space in many places. There are, or were, no more riverbanks with tree vegetation! “The last tree” – for the beaver at all events – has or had become reality…  – – – Interpretation: Renate Hugel

Short Biography:

heinz hugel

1936: Heinz Hugel was born in Bremen.

1976, since: Activity in the artistic area, among others in the adult education

1981, from: Freelance artist

1982: Foundation of a gallery

1990: Joining the artist group “Der Bogen”

1992: Founder member of the group “Quintum” (union of international artists)

2000: Symposium “Encounter of Native American Artists and Artists from Germany (one artist from Bulgaria)” (con-organization)

2001: Study visit to Oklahoma/the USA (“return visit”),

Expansion of the group “Quintum” into “Quintum international”

2002: Certificate of the university Bremen – studies with Professor Uwe Mempel, main emphasis in “Art Practice” – “Experimental Ceramic”

2007: Member of the group “Art in the Province”

2009: Member of the group “Art – Projekt”

2013, from: Retreat because of physical problems

Exhibitions or Exhibition Participations: (Choice)

Bremen, Borgholzhausen, Herford, Hamburg, Kiel, Kleestadt, Großumstadt, Langenargen (Lake Constance), Loidved (Denmark), Munich, New York, (USA), Oklahoma (USA), Rose State College (Oklahoma City, USA), Tribes Gallery (Norman, USA), Heaven, “International Exhibition” of German and Anadarko Basin Artists (Gracemont, USA), Siklos (Hungary), Tekomatorp (Sweden), Tournus (France), Zwolle (Netherlands)

Several Exhibitions in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony, Germany):  Bassum, Bruchhausen – Vilsen: Klostermühle Heiligenberg (Cloister Mill Saint Mountain), Delmenhorst, Diepholz, Kirchdorf, Lemwerder, Oldendorf, Osterholz Scharmbeck, Rotenburg, Wümme, Schneesen, Sulingen, Syke, Wagenfeld, Weertzen, Weyhe, Wildeshausen, Worpswede – – – Heinz Hugel

Remark 1: Current stand: To Heinz Hugel I have written under “Art Touches Art” the contributions “Art Touches Art – 7”, “Art Touches Art – 15” and “Art Touches Art – 21”.  In addition, there is a mention under “Art Touches Art – 16” (the contribution to the teamwork “block-pictures”).

Remark 2: The contributions under „Art Touches Art“ refer to the symposium „Attempt of an Encounter – Five Native American Artists meet five European Artists“. This had taken place in Bremen (Germany), in the year 2000. Whoever would like to ask about the genesis of the symposium can scroll back till „Art Touches Art – 1“, then continue scrolling back till Information about ‚Art Touches Art‘; after that you find then the „Chronology of the Past History“. – – –  Renate Hugel

Kelly Church

Kelly Church:  „The Beaver“,  Acryl on canvas, 50 x 40 cm, 2000, Bremen (Germany)

The Beaver…

Kelly Church (Anishnabe Native) is an Anishnabe-painter and holds the “Woodland Style” with that. The acryl-picture „The Beaver“, this she has painted on canvas with the size 50 cm x 40 cm.

The first look at the picture leads the attention directly to this beaver which seems almost to fill out the canvas-surface with his volume. His body is determined by the colors blue (like water) and red (like blood). But white spots also spread while the head wears a deep black and the muzzle seems to merge with the background in color.

At her first work step Kelly Church (KC) had painted this background with broad brush lines drawn evenly and glazing in a bright brown color from left to right about the complete canvas-surface. An almost even area on which some brush traces have “immortalized” themselves in their almost parallel course has arisen. If one looks at the complete area of the background in its pale brown, it reminds of “wood”. At this point of view one can interpret the brush traces going evenly as details of growth rings of the wood. Something essential seems to the wood, though, to be missing: The bright brown color works together with the flat moderation of the painting as a sterile surface which has lost any life! And this astonishes because wood determines the world of the beaver!  Therefore I infer from it that this represented wood area is not his world. It had been his world, once!

This means: the beaver is to be seen in front of his world having been lost!  The sterility of the artificial one (from the modern world) seems to be disturbed, however, of numerous little spirals. These strange things spread out numerously on the complete canvas-surface and give up mysteries…

But at first I give attention to the beaver:

His body volume impresses with his cardinality. In stylized form even some muscle parts can be recognized in their concentrated strength. These “strength centers” want to follow the will of the beaver and to get active by helping the beaver to form his world, with their energy. At all events his determination and his will are to feel considerably! The dynamics of the beaver, however, seems to go into emptiness – he cannot realize his power anymore! For, there is something like a trifle… This makes his energy stiffen and his movements appear as “frozen”…

Therefore the beaver is like a room reaching sculpture, just something static.

In this picture the beaver gets into touch with the “artificial” and “lifeless”: A meeting with something which is static and therefore is outside his world!

This landscape shaper, who loves to build his accommodation in the form of castles, this is the beaver! He also loves to dam water to be able to swim into his beaver castle comfortably also in dry periods! He further loves the community with other plants and animals, which used to follow him to his damp country and water areas… With other words: He loves his landscape being characteristic for him, which he has formed by himself – this is his world!

The chance to create one’s world of one’s own had been gone among others lost with the straightened river courses and with fastened shores. An environment which has been formed by human hand can be recognized: Everything was smoothed and kept sterile. Something like that arises obviously from brains which follow the will of man in their thinking pursuing their aims characteristic for them. The one who is forced to subordinate itself to these facts, this is nature!

What else does the work of art done by Kelly Church tell?

The mysterious spirals still are there!

I had described and interpreted the picture “Talking with the Manitous” of Kelly Church in “Art Touches Art – 3”. There spirals also can be recognized, since which are – similar to an umbilical cord but – connected to any represented being. I had seen straps of information in the spirals which carry information about the complete development of an individual in themselves in my interpretation then. One only must decode them…

Kelly Church: „Talking with the Manitous“ (See to this: “Art Touches Art – 3”)

The spirals in the picture “The Beaver” apparently have lost the contact with their original living beings: They simply were cut! Left is the memory of the former lives having remained millennia and more!

These memories are floating in the room and disturbing the sterile world! Whoever is sensitively, because not having lost the connection with the “memory-spirals” of one’s own, the one will be touched unpleasantly of the sterile and artificial. There are “antennae” within the body looking for same vibrations in the outside world. To find nothing, this can arouse a longing for original nature…

Is the beaver also longing for his world?  May be that he tries to reach his familiar day-room, by passing through those “memory- spirals”…

In any case he, the beaver, accepts gratefully every support which makes it possible for him to carry on again immediately there, where the beavers then must have had to stop for generations before. The “spirals” have stored all knowledge and all abilities permitting the beaver simply “to let arouse again his own world”…

Interpretation: Renate Hugel

Remark 1: Current stand: To Kelly Church I have written under “Art Touches Art” the contributions “Art Touches Art – 3”, “Art Touches Art – 12” and “Art Touches Art – 20”.  In addition, there is a mention under “Art Touches Art – 16” (the contribution to the teamwork “block-pictures”).

Remark 2: The contributions under „Art Touches Art“ refer to the symposium „Attempt of an Encounter – Five Native American Artists meet five European Artists“. This had taken place in Bremen (Germany), in the year 2000. Whoever would like to ask about the genesis of the symposium can scroll back till „Art Touches Art – 1“, then continue scrolling back till Information about ‚Art Touches Art‘; after that you find then the „Chronology of the Past History“.                                    Renate Hugel