Heiderose Mohr’s exhibition at The Green Door Gallery is inspired by a line from from the epic poem ‘Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes’ by Austrian poet Rilke: ‘Als Adern Durch Sein Dunkel’ (literally translates as ‘veined in his darkness’).
Mohr is a German artist, living and working near Brussels. She studied fine arts at the Luca School of Arts in Brussels and holds a Masters degree in painting from Sint Lucas Antwerp.
Mohr’s work is intriguing in subject matter, as well as in execution. She refers to her work as ‘Dionysian’ in that her artistic response is sensual and emotional. Her subject matter explores the boundaries between human forms and animals, hybrids of birds and women, sea creatures and children, deities and mortals. The exploration of these binaries creates an artistic tension; we are confronted with the familiar and the unknown in direct juxtaposition.
Mohr says that Orpheus’s wandering in the underworld where the dead live, in search of Eurydice, is a landscape of the souls, this struck a chord with the artist who says her landscapes go through her imagination and are transformed: “In my work you find things that are recognisable from the real world, but then things get mixed up like Orpheus in this strange world, full of creatures, peoples, gods, chimeras, hybrids; Orpheus himself is half god, half human.”
“Orpheus was seen as someone who could reconcile creatures and mankind bringing harmony through his music. It’s metaphorical, but at the centre of my work is asking where mankind is going, we have advanced technologies like CRISPR and cloning, but how do we treat nature. Can we live in peace with our environment and not destroy each other?”
This hybrid view of the world is also shown in how Mohr combines oil paint with digital collage, comprising layers of digital composition, all executed on the same surface. Her compositions begin on a computer, through a process of collaging and digital painting. This image once transferred to canvas then becomes the support for the painted layers above. At this point the artist works on the new surface using oils and pigments, revealing and at times obliterating the printed fragments beneath.
www.greendoorbrussels.com
www.heiderosemohr.myportfolio.com
Exhibition: 3 – 24 September 2023
Gallery opening hours: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday : 14.00 – 18.00
Saturday and Sunday: 12.00 – 16.00.
Monday and Tuesday by appointment only
