Hilma af Klint
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
Having recently spent quite a bit of time on the legacy Genesis P-Orridge left behind and what has been accomplished with Thee Temple of Psychic Youth and the ideas it transported and triggered, the paintings of cosmic visionary Hilma af Klint arriving in Sydney could not be more timely.
Born in the second half of the nineteenth century, Hilma af Klint was essentially a DIY artist channelling her inspirations in abstract art for which there had been neither a forum nor a categorization before. Needless to say, she suffered the fate of many trailblazing artists, i.e. the discovery and appreciation of her oeuvre only eventuated long after she had shuffled off this mortal coil.
A spiritualist and theosopher intrinsically interested in science at heart, Klint painted her visions of which she was sure that the messages that lay within, her contemporaries would not be ready for.
Close to eighty years after her death, I was fortunate enough to experience over one hundred of her paintings as part of the exhibition The Secret Paintings at the Art Gallery of NSW.
The exhibition traces Klint’s evolution from the beginnings trying to capture the intricacies of the natural world to her emissions as a constituent of the female art collective that became known as The Five, which became known for their intuitive paintings.
The final, most interesting part of the exhibition sees Klint acting as a medium, materializing on canvases what her antennae received as communications from spiritual beings, containing deeper meanings pertaining to pandrogeny an d the challenge of stereotypes and dualities that were to be unveiled in an unknown future.
Minimal in nature, Klint’s approach is informed by carefully chosen colour schemes infused with selected text excerpts and symbolism, with especially the bigger scale paintings with their delicate details capturing the audience’s imagination with a visual language that is comprised in equal parts of futuristic, cosmic and medieval constituents.
Summa summarum, a well-curated exhibition dedicated to an artist whose future has arrived now more than ever.
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image courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales
