TINA GILLEN DEVISES HER PAINTI...
Tina Gillen devises her paintings and their constituent attributes – a figurative universe offset by surfacing forms – with both intensity and precision. In the pictorial compositions that characterise her latest works, surface and space compete for the viewer’s attention.From this tension arises a struggle of near-abstract forms with narrative imagery. However, by suppressing, shifting or adding elements, the artist deprives her paintings of any certainty: the image tilts and is reconstructed in the viewer’s eye, as the time required for deciphering the painting reiterates the moment of its creation.
A postcard once collected, a fragment of a photo taken on recent holidays, an advertisement of next door’s travel agency...; all these fragments are bestowed a new meaning when meeting the viewer’s imagination. The notion of painting as a representational device of a both real and coherent world is shattered. Memories and desires merge: a feeling of ubiquity seizes the viewer who in turn becomes the legitimizing actor of the painting’s reality.
Alex Reding
Translation: Boris Kremer