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Artist Statement:
Apart from the inheritance of
salient features the
upbringing takes up a
considerable part in achieving
a status gained through
personal merit rather than as
a result of the circumstances
into which somebody is born.
Nonetheless, it is also
significant how the
environment presents itself to
the adolescent.
I my case an art-interested
family tree can be traced to
the 17th century; my maternal
grandfather was a wrought-iron
craftsman, and my mother
painted; the father of my
father was involved in the art
of painting; my father made
oil paintings, charcoal and
pencil drawings.
Following World War II I grew
up in a financial crisis with
only a few toys and the
neighborhood was covered with
ruins. You could hardly
appreciate a beautiful sight
when it comes to architecture.
But there was nature,
improvisation and a lot of
fantasies. Also count the
practical knowledge of
individuals in Rahnsdorf, my
neighborhood, which included
artists such as sculptors and
writers.
As a little child I learned to
paint on sand ways. My father
animated me to decipher
figures and images in the
clouds and in nature. We
painted with our mind, let it
develop our great paintings,
tried to explain ...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Collective Exhibition at Agora
Gallery, Feb.2006 in Chelsea
New York City.
Collective Exhibition at Agora
Gallery, June- 2007 in Chelsea
New York City.
Collective Exhibition Jan. 4
to 29 Jan. 2008, at Amsterdam
whitney gallery in Chelsea
NYC.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION AT ICO
GALLERY IN MANHATTEN NYC. FROM
SEPT-2 ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
upcoming exhibition at ico
Gallery NYC. Sept 2-23
2008....
Further Information
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Reviews for Ilona Van Hoek:
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ArtisSpectrum Magazine - Volume 19-May- 2008-
Ilona van Hoek ardently engages the observable world, re-envisioning landscapes, figures, and the cosmos with unrestrained energy that catapults her paintings into a surreal space between fact and fiction. Her skyscapes and landscapes have enough descriptive detail to anchor them in reality, but they also have an exaggerated, mythical liveliness. Van Hoeks images broach the truth that hovers between the visible and the invisible world.
A dexterous painter, van Hoek scrupulously renders perspective, light and color. She uses a wide ranging palette, moving from natural tones to bright pinks and greens. Since she often depicts both the earth and the cosmos, she adeptly navigates the gamut of natural light, convincingly evincing the glow of sunrises or the darkness of outer space.
Van Hoeks paintings offer viewers an alternative reality. She uses her own interactions with the world around her to envision complex, expressive and arresting scenes. Sometimes these scenes act as provocative theories, prompting viewers to question their own realities; sometimes the scenes become mythological narratives that transport viewers into an unfamiliar cosmos. Born in Berlin, Ilona van Hoek grew up amidst the political turmoil of the former East Germany. She moved to Holland before the wall fell and later moved to the United States. She now lives and works on the East Coast.
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Ilona van Hoek's oil paintings contain dramatic, and sometimes otherworldly images that seem to float just beyond the reach of the normal, human experience. Exploring a stunning range of subjects with sharp, precise brush strokes and vivid color palette, van Hoek presents the viewer painfully forlorn landscapes, figures hovering in space, and a whole vocabulary of symbols and symbolism. The powerful mythology of the artistıs canvasses is deeply personal. Her work calls to mind the inventions of Hieronymus Bosch, but the visions are executed with the strong lines of the German Expressionists. Van Hoek, was born and raised in Berlin. Her parents, both painters not only encouraged her painting but also encouraged her to investigate the world of the imagination. She credits her motherıs portrait skills and her fatherıs landscape paintings as the influences that led to her own unique style. Ilona currently resides in the United States
{ Artmine-press release}
Born in Berlin , Ilona van Hoek is also a contemporary Symbolist, albeit with a somewhat darker vision. Depicting scenes that resonate with shadowy sturm und drang like a visual equivalent of the Wagnerian opera, her work has been aptly compared to that of Hieronymus Bosch. In her oil painting, "Nord," for example, the disembodied face of a stern, sage-like presence with a white handlebar mustache, the tips of which trail off into the clouds, is suspended above a grim nocturnal landscape where a sea serpent swims between craggy cliffs. In another painting called "Flaschengeist" van Hoek again reveals her fertile imagination with a formidable figure of a woman, appearing suspended like an apparition in mid-air, who could be a lapsed saint escaped from a religious icon .
Like the other artists in this gem of a show, she has evolved a personal language with which to manifest the human spirit.
{ ArtisSpectrum Magazine }
Born in Berlin, Germany, Ilona van Hoek has had a lifelong fas-cination with art, the tactile nature of the practice, the paint and the brushes. However, it is the psychological and storytelling capabilities in art that are fundamental to her particular style. "I try to show stories in my presentations of art," she explains, "the paintings develop through engagement of my thoughts."
Van Hoekıs works explore the gamut of human emotion, from love and hate to joy and despair
With beautiful strokes she creates landscapes of rivers, moun-tains, and endless skies and within this world plays out a specta-cle of human existence. The characters can appear like menacing ghouls or angelic innocents, and she compels her audience to take pleasure in discovering the implicit storyline.
Van Hoekıs unique style of painting has attracted the interest of the art world, recently acquiring representation in New York. She lives and works in the United States.
{ ArtisSpectrum Magazine }
Postmodern Mythmakers
-- -- Peter Wiley -- --
Two artists exemplified a tendency that might be termed "the new mythology," in recent exhibitions at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, in Chelsea: Berlin-born painter Ilona van Hoek is often compared to Hieronymous Bosch for her meticulous technique and willingness to plumb the depths of fantasy. Yet for all the picturesque elements in some of her canvases, she can also invest a simple portrait with a haunting allusiveness, as in "Moderne sklaverei," which translates into English as "Contemporary Slavery." Does the "slavery" of the title refer to domestic bondage, or is the woman simply a slave to beauty? Part of the power of van Hoek's art is that the viewer must draw his or her own conclusions.
{ Gallery and Studio magazine}
Drawing from her subliminal state, Surrealist artist ILONA VAN HOEK depicts her fiery imagination onto richly colored canvases, providing the viewer with a world of fantasy to ponder and enjoy
{ Artnet- Amsterdam whitney gallery}
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