In the sixties, Dr. Hugo Heyrman revealed himself as the tender but inveterate anarchist, when he introduced happenings, video and conceptual art. With this rebellious attitude, he focuses his attention (from 1974) back to his first love, painting.

Potential images

About his motivation Heyrman says: "My reflections on the world and society are motivated by the idea that a single moment of understanding can flood a whole life with meaning. Art creates another reality. Starting from existing images, I paint the ambiguities of the visible, potential images with ambivalent meanings, so that another pictorial and mental space is opening up: cinematic, enigmatic and open-ended".

In Dr. Hugo's painterly world, there are no boundaries between abstraction and figuration, objective and subjective, memory and imagination. The painter allows the viewer to explore a potential space – an atmospheric dimension of depth, tonality and color gradations. This transparent thinking leads to a liberating insight in the psychology of the image. Relevant for Heyrman's 'perspectivism', is the discovery of the unknown in the known.

Mental filters

Another Reality presents images of a changing world. In 'The Crowning' (2011) we see how a young woman puts on a safety helmet. It is a powerful metaphor for the contemporary fragility of life. With a remarkable impact, it accentuates the continuous presence of the past, contained within all of us.

For Heyrman, painting is a source of visual pleasure, but also a reflection on the visual and mental filters through which we experience the beauty and complexity of all images that surround us. The visual content of the informally painted images goes beyond words. It's all about what's happening when you look at a painting. Forms and colors act on us pre-reflectively; they affect the viewer before they become aware of what the brushstroke actually represents. Characteristic for his body of work is that it stirs emotions and the intellect equally. He shows us that essentially everything is a matter of degree. Dr. Hugo Heyrman's paintings function as potential images, which resonate in our minds.

The Crowning, 2011

Two Figures, 2011

New Day, 2012

The entering, 2010

The intensification of the gaze

With his work Dr. Hugo Heyrman explores the physical, visual and conceptual boundaries of an image. Since the 1960s he has emerged as one of the most important painters of his generation. His artistic achievements are based on a series of paintings, including To Perceive the Perception (1975), A Vision is finer than a View (1986), Cinematic (2003) and City Life & Body Language (2008). A central concept in his work is the appearance and disappearance of images; the temporality of atmosphere, perspective, reflections, shadows and traces. Another returning theme is the fragility of modern life, whereby the body language of human emotions are situated against a background of changing urban existence.

Red Light Zone, 2009

Images of images

Some paintings are fragments from other paintings, for example Visibility #1 and Visibility #2, both are details from the larger work Snow Gaze (2010). Heyrman says, 'The act of painting leads me to other dimensions within the image, it opens up new imaginative meanings.' In the exhibition we can experience these intentions, translated into matter, form, colour, light and transparency. The artist takes you along on a psychogeographical journey, making you aware of the fact that in the experience of a small world you can discover the whole world.

Body Power, 2009

Snow Gaze, 2010

In de jaren zestig ontpopte Dr. Hugo Heyrman zich als de zachtmoedige maar onverbiddelijke anarchist, toen hij happenings, video en conceptuele kunst introduceerde. Vanuit deze rebelse houding, richtte hij (vanaf 1974) zijn aandacht volledig op de schilderkunst.

Kantelmomenten

Dr. Hugo Heyrman schildert – “omdat het een fascinerende ervaring is, hoe anders de wereld er kan uitzien op doek”. De werken zijn reflecties over de verschijningsvorm van het reële. Vanuit een persoonlijk archief, ervaringen, herinneringen en verbeelding, ontstaan er filmische scenarios. Het zijn picturale transformaties over het mysterie van de flux of life. Terugkerende thema’s zijn filosofische en psychologische kantelmomenten, het stadsleven, lichaamstaal, liefde, eenzaamheid en de menselijke conditie.

De transformatieve atmosfeer van de werken behoort tot een imaginaire wereld. Zijn werk heeft een unieke look, die de interactie van de verbeelding met het werk opent. De beelden zinderen en zien er vloeibaar uit. Ze spreken voor zichzelf. Het is een kristallisatie van het proces van het schilderen. Ze tonen ons ook de schoonheid van iets niet begrijpen. In het oeuvre van de kunstenaar is de blik altijd onderweg, tussen een uiterlijke en innerlijke wereld. Op het doek, leeft de transformatieve blik van de kunstenaar verder in de tijd.

Resonantie

Een relevante karakteristiek is dat Heyrman uitdrukking geeft aan een onbevangen gevoel. Hij creëert beelden die een belofte inhouden van wat nog gaat komen. Zijn benadering is bevrijdend en informeel, zonder retoriek of ironie. Door de opbouw van suggestieve verflagen, evoceert hij een mentale ruimte. De sensuele tactiliteit van zijn penseelstreken, samen met de symbolisch/emotionele betekenis van de kleur, zet aan tot een betrokkenheid met de wereld, in een atmosfeer van resonantie.

De kunstenaar deelt de ervaring van een andere realiteit met ons, door het buitengewone in het gewone zichtbaar te maken, bijvoorbeeld; De Kersentaart (2014), een diepgaande reflectie over aanwezigheid en afwezigheid, met een kristallijne transparantie, of Personal Tempo (2013) en Yellow Visibility II (2014), waar een eenzame figuur zich voortbeweegt in een kosmologisch aandoende omgeving van kleur, licht, schaduw en elementaire krachten. Het zijn beelden waarin de blik eindeloos kan verdwalen. Dr. Hugo geeft de blik van verwondering een schilderkunstig bestaan.

Klik hier om de vorige exposities te bekijken

Passage, 2014

Night Lights, 2014

Cycling Light, 2014

The extensive exhibition Transparency of Time (2017) reveils how Dr. Hugo Heyrman explores the posibilities of painting and the adventure of pervious periods: A Transformative Gaze (2014), Another Reality (2012), Inside the image (2010), City Life & Body Language #2 (2008). This is his thirteenth exhibition in Galerie De Zwarte Panter, Antwerp, since 1975.

An imagined reality

The work of Dr. Hugo Heyrman is a continuous adventure into the power of painting and the resonance of the image. He questions the origins of perception and the way images shape our reality: a transformative balance of figuration and abstraction – with light as time, colour as space and transparency as form. Dr. Hugo paints shapes of time, images with a build-in attention for the factor time, the fourth dimension in art.

A timeless now

Like dreams, memories and moods, the paintings are about the image as event. The structuring of time, city life and body language, a spectrum of the human figure/condition in space-time: moving, sitting, standing, walking… every person in motion carries a private time. Touching on the role of time as the oldest riddle of life, the paintings offer a space for transparency, as a liberating value, a pictorial world, where past, present and future can come together in a timeless now.

Click here for previous exhibitions

Top: Transparent Interaction, 2016

Bottom: Waiting Lights, 2015

Left: Stadstrommelaar, 2018

Bottom: Imaginary Red Carpet, 2017

The exhibition Dr. Hugo Heyrman / The Double Life of Images (2019) includes more than 50 works. Since the 1960s, he has developed as one of the most important painters of his generation. In essence, his work is about the mysterious double life of images — it opens up a transitional space between reality, memory and imagination. His commitment to the world, as a pictorial reality, touches us a place outside space and time — in the eye of the ‘maelstrom’, surrounded by a changing ‘zeitgeist’.

Painter of postmodern life

Dr. Hugo Heyrman’s enigmatic paintings are characterised by a pictorial intensity and a resonance of the images. As a painter of ‘atmospheres of change’ his art opens a transitional space between reality, memory and imagination. Via the mysterious double life of images we enter a dimension of an inner sense of time — where a gaze becomes a private dream.

Click here for previous exhibitions.

Dr. Hugo Heyrman – participiation at Forgotten Heritage: European Avant-Garde Art Online project by Marika Kuźmicz, founder of the Arton Foundation, presented at the National Museum, Warsaw. Click here

Dr. Hugo Heyrman / The Double Life of Images

Opening Saturday 9 November 2019 from 16u00 till 22u00

The exposition runs from Sunday 10 November 2019 till 12 January 2020

Galerie De Zwarte Panter | Hoogstraat 70-72-74 | Antwerp | Belgium

Open from thursday till sunday, 13u30 till 18u00.

www.doctorhugo.org

The exhibition of Dr. Hugo Heyrman, Why, What, When & Where is an Image? runs from Thursday 25 November until Sunday 23 January 2022. The opening will be on Saturday 20 November and Sunday 21 November from 11 am till 7 pm.

At the occasion of the eponymous exhibition, the book Dr. Hugo Heyrman Why What, When & Where is an Image? was published.

The artist Dr. Hugo Heyrman occupies a unique positions within the art world. Looking back at an artistic career of more than fifty years, we are confronted with an oeuvre that has consistently played a pioneering role, starting from the 1960s, when he introduced happenings, pop and conceptual art.

The oeuvre, from the first series Streetlife Cycle - To Perceive the Perception (1975) till the recent, Why, What, When & Where is an Image? (2021-2022) makes a statement about the poetics of painting and the evocative power of thought-images.

Dr. Hugo Heyrman gives paintings a cinematic, enigmatic dimension. By questioning the truth of images, Heyrman opens up a poetic, pictorial space, between the real, the remembered and the imaginary.

Click here for previous exhibitions.

Top: Undressing, 2020

Above: Rhythmic Moves, 2021