Hana Hillerova: Thought Forms
Sala Diaz
- Stevan Zivadinovic -
It is a shame that when forced to consider magic, our collective cultural imagination, malnourished as it is, hardly ventures past glitter—at best vapid wish fulfillment and at worst, mere dazzle—perhaps killing some childhood monsters in the process. Hana Hillerova’s take on magic is refreshingly graspable and matter-of-fact. Enchantment, as it manifests in Hillerova’s Thought Forms at Sala Diaz, is a sensible facet of the human experience—as concrete and comprehensible as, for example, the sun, civilization and common crockery, and yet, a sense of unease still follows one home.
Early evening on opening night, Sala Diaz is dark. The entire first room, floor to ceiling, is painted white. The only light in the space emanates from sparse candles scattered in pairs. In the center of the room—bigger than a man, top-heavy and bilaterally symmetrical—hangs a complex geometric solid made of mirrors. It could easily pass for an unholy union between the Eiffel Tower and a crystal chandelier. The candlelight and the white room conspire in such a way that it is unclear if the shape stands on the floor or is suspended from an unused light fixture on the ceiling. Effectively, it levitates, its shadow cast in the adjoining room. From the center of the ceiling—from an old, dim light bulb—the shadow spreads down the wall all the way to the floor. The audience speculates, draws conclusions, feels clever about figuring out how this trick is accomplished.
This room is set up like a plain bedroom. A fairly narrow bed sits under a window; two charcoal drawings hang on the wall on each side of the window. Lying down and looking up, I recall sleeping in my grandparents’ apartment in Europe, watching streetlights and passing trolleys cast shadows across the ceiling and down rows of windows. I think of Peter Pan and his disembodied shadow woes, of H. P. Lovecraft and his eagerness to drive his characters insane via peculiar geometry. I think of how Old World churches stress the supernatural by hiding it in the near darkness of flickering candles.
This bedroom could easily belong to Walter Mitty or Gregor Samsa, only its atmosphere is neither wistful nor morbid—neither regretful nor in any way abject or dire. It is full of potential, like the room an abstract-minded child might dream up. The two charcoal drawings, both somewhat cubist, moody and gloomy, simultaneously act as proof of the encroachment upon other spaces by Hillerova’s thought form and her minimal, careful decoration—the kind of illustrations little Gregor Mitty would find both terrifying and enticing.
Hana, Hillerova, Thought Forms, 2007
Digital drawing
8 x 12 inches
The more I stare at the shadow, the more the crystalline shape appears impervious to judgment—aesthetic, critical, value or moral. Giving it a thumbs up or down would not faze it at all. It is a thought form, after all—axiomatic and absolute, not subject to gravity yet solid and physically imposing. The piece does not directly aspire to objecthood in the minimalist sense of the word. Rather, it strives to be outside of its native realm—in the realm of abstract thought. Hence, by its very nature, it refuses to rely on an audience to activate it. It doesn’t interact with the viewer. It doesn’t communicate. It doesn’t give any of itself away. It doesn’t even reach out. And while it doesn’t prohibit entry, it doesn’t think entry would make a difference. It doesn’t care; it just is.
Hana Hillerova, Thought Forms, 2007
Installation view
So strong is the work’s presence that I fear once its shadow is painted over and mirrors broken off, its geometry will leave a ghost image in midair, haunting the gallery as long as a disembodied idea can haunt a material location. It is unnerving on some visceral level to think that this monstrous stone channeled itself into our world through Hillerova. And yet, the whole thing is oddly compelling, reassuring and empowering. It is an altar to creativity at its most basic and most abstract. It is the stuff of nightmares; it is what dreams are made of.