Nan Hoover

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Nan Hoover, 2007
FLORA by Nan Hoover, CCA Glasgow, 2007
Nan Hoover in the video studio at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, 1991
"The Ls", installation in Hardenberg train station, Netherlands, 1990

Nan Hoover (born May 12, 1931 in New York City ; † June 9, 2008 in Berlin ) is one of the pioneers of international light, video and performance art. Her early works were shaped by Surrealism painting . Since the beginning of the 1970s, in her performances, video works and light installations, she has been approaching a minimalist formal language based on reduction and reflection, in which time is interpreted and made conscious through the medium of extreme slowness and space through the medium of light. Since then, it has made a name for itself in international museums, exhibition halls and in public spaces with exhibitions, performances and light installations. In 1977 she took part in the sixth and in 1987 the eighth documenta in Kassel. In 1986 she was a lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute , 1986–1996 professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and 1998–1999 professor at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam.

life and work

Nan Hoover decided to become an artist in the years of new beginnings after the big stock market crash in New York . The decision between dance and painting fell in favor of painting, a medium in which she could evaluate her own creativity regardless of external conditions.

After studying at Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC , she worked as a painter, first in Washington and later in New York. Hoover's art had little to do with the Abstract Expressionism of that time and the heated discussions about it in the New York art scene. Her interest in the human body and in the psychology of the human being was too great. She was also interested in the secrets of light, which she had become curious about through Rembrandt van Rijn , whose oil studies fascinated her again and again during her visits to the Washington National Gallery of Art .

The upheavals of the 1960s, when Minimal Art , Anti-Form and Conceptual Art emerged in quick succession in the New York art scene , initially had no discernible influence on Hoover's figurative, surreal works of art. The decision in 1969 to move to Amsterdam may nevertheless have arisen from the need to continue one's own artistic work, which was so different from the entire mainstream of New York at the time, in a location with a more favorable environment. It should then be Amsterdam, of all places, where she first came into contact with a video camera through her second husband Richard Hefti, where she transferred the interest in dance that had slumbered since childhood into the medium of performance, where she found photography and light art and where she did at the age of almost forty, dared a new beginning, in which she was able to remain true to the concern of getting closer to the human figure and its psychology, but in which she succeeded in translating this concern into a contemporary artistic language with new means.

The video and performance artist, who soon took on Dutch citizenship, enjoyed rapid success in the 1970s and 1980s: in 1977 she was invited by Manfred Schneckenburger to documenta 6 in Kassel , and in the same year she made the leap to a video presentation Museum of Modern Art in New York and in 1980 she received an invitation from the German Academic Exchange Service for an artist-in-residence grant in Berlin . This is where the film "Doors" was made, in which Hoover interprets the step from New York to Berlin as a metaphor for walking through a door and as a fundamental theme of coming and going, of change and movement, transition and initiation. The hand that repeatedly grabs the handle in the sequences of this film and pushes it down can also be read as a symbol for the step from painting to video, away from creating the light on the screen and towards using the light from the location behind the camera. In the future, even hoovers recorded videos with just a single take often showed a section of their body (fingers, face, silhouette) that moved between light and dark. Hoover used the control monitor during the video recording to see what she was doing. Without interruption or later video editing, she "painted" a (mostly slowly) moving picture with her body or with transparent paper and light sources. She later spoke of photography, video and light as different "brushes" for her work.

In 1984 Hoover took part in the Biennale di Venezia , and in 1986 she became professor of video art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . Since the 1990s she has realized spectacular indoor and outdoor light installations, including "Die Spur des Lichtes" in 1991 in front of the Glyptothek Munich , "in / out" in 1993 in Düsseldorf, "Movement from either direction" in 1995 in the art and exhibition hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn, "Movement in Light" 1997 in front of the Wiesbaden Museum and "Art in Castles" 1997 in Kasteel Huis Bergh in 's-Heerenberg in the Netherlands. In 2002 and 2003 Hoover took part in the Lüdenscheid light routes .

Hoover often combined her light installations, some of which were interactive, with performances in which she moved slowly and with a time delay through her own arrangements of black cubes and hidden spotlights, with her body absorbing the light in strips and plunging it back into the darkness. She thus became a master in making light tangible, this most common of all physical processes. The visitors to her light installations became more and more perceptors and took the step from unconsciously to consciously perceiving what Hoover's painting with the medium of light can trigger in us in terms of associations and emotions. On this difference between looking and perceiving, Hoover himself explained: "It is not so important how we look at a thing, but how we perceive it - that can happen within a second, but with an after-effect over decades or a whole life" (quoted after: Night Letters, Cologne: Salon Verlag, 2000). Speaking to the Dutch curator and art critic Rob Perrée, she added: "I want to trigger the viewer's imagination. I want to establish a dialogue with him. Dialogue means that I am careful not to tell the viewer, 'this is a cup Tea.' Instead I say, 'What do you think, could this be a cup of tea?' When it comes to perception, the imagination has to be set in motion to find out what you are actually seeing. When something is presented very concretely, there is no need to activate that imagination "(quoted from: Rob Perrée, Dialogue Nan Hoover, Cologne: Salon Verlag, 2001). From 1998 to 1999 Nan Hoover led the multimedia class at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Since 2005 she lived and worked in Berlin in the garden city Atlantic . She died in Berlin in 2008. The artistic estate administration lies with the Nan Hoover Foundation in cooperation with the Sebastian Fath Contemporary gallery in Mannheim. Nan Hoover's works "Desert" (1985), "Halfsleep" (1984), "Projections" (1981) and "Returning to Fuji" (1984) are among others. a. in the archive of the Imai - inter media art institute . The "hum disturbance" effect specifically used by Hoover in "Returning to Fuji" is presented as an example in the compendium of image disturbances in analog video (2013).

Exhibitions

Nan Hoover's works have been shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Kunstmuseum Bern , the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn, the Kunsthaus Zürich , the Museum Wiesbaden and in exhibited at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt . She also took part with works at documenta 6 and 8 and the Venice Biennale .

Exhibitions 2008–2016

(G = Group Show, C = Catalog)

  • 2016
    • Stasis and Latenz, Symposium, Art Academy Düsseldorf, January 28th - 30th, 2016 (G)
  • 2015
    • Nan Hoover, Akademie-Galerie - Die Neue Sammlung, Düsseldorf, October 22, 2015 - January 17, 2016
    • Nan Hoover (1931-2008). Time, nature, light, Museum Art of the West Coast, Alkersum on Föhr, July 19, 2015 - January 10, 2016
    • 20th Gallery Days Mannheim, Mannheimer Kunstverein, March 27-29, 2015 (G)
  • 2014
    • time space silence light - the influence of Nan Hoover, PuntWG, Amsterdam, September 20 - October 20, 2014 (G)
    • Last seen Entering the Biltmore, South London Gallery, London, June 26 - September 14, 2014 (G)
  • 2013
    • Images of an Infinite Film, Museum of Modern Art, New York, September 7, 2013 - March 2, 2014 (G)
    • Re.act.feminism, Akademie der Künste Berlin, June 21 - August 18, 2013 (G)
    • Illusory landscapes of Nan Hoover, National Center for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, January 21 - February 4, 2013
  • 2012
    • Big Picture III (scenes / figures), Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K 21, Düsseldorf, April 14, 2012 - January 27, 2013 (G)
    • Give me your hand, Art Foyer of DZ Bank Frankfurt am Main, April 13 - June 2, 2012 (G, C)
    • Pictures against the dark. Video art from the imai archive at KIT, Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf, April 28 - June 24, 2012 (G)
    • Kaleidoscope of Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles and San Francisco, 21./22. January and 27./28. January 2012 (G)
  • 2011
    • Big Picture II (time zones), Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K 21, Düsseldorf, December 9, 2011 - April 1, 2012 (G)
    • Exchange and Evolution: Worldwide Video Long Beach 1974–1999, Long Beach Museum of Art, California, October 7, 2011 - February 12, 2012 (G, C)
    • To Transfer or to Transform, Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMK), Amsterdam, December 6, 2011
    • Inspired by Nan Hoover. A comprehensive program highlighting the work of Nan Hoover and new work inspired by Nan Hoover, Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMK), Amsterdam, in co-operation with the Nan Hoover Foundation, 2./3. December 2011 (G)
    • Cine Sonic Nan Hoover and Banabilla, Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMK), Amsterdam, December 2, 2011
    • Landscape Program, Public Art Screens, Stavanger, November 1, 2011 - December 31, 2011 (G)
    • The Invention of Reality - Photography at the Art Academy Düsseldorf from 1970 to today, Akademie-Galerie, Düsseldorf, September 16, 2011 - February 5, 2012 (G, C)
    • Cine Sonic Nan Hoover and Banabilla, Goethe-Institut, Amsterdam, September 9, 2011
    • Nan Hoover - Out of the Ordinary, Sebastian Fath Contemporary, Mannheim, May 14-28, 2011
  • 2010
    • Point of View on The Collection: Acts of Presence, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, November 4, 2010 - March 31, 2011 (G)
    • Homage to Nan Hoover, Onomato Association Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, May 2010
    • Schwarz und Weiss, Mannheimer Kunstverein and Sebastian Fath Contemporary, Mannheim, May 7th - 9th, 2010 (G)
    • Movement in Light, Camden Arts Center, London, October 7th 2010
    • Light and Shadow, Sebastian Fath Contemporary, Mannheim January 15 - February 13, 2010 (G)
  • 2009
    • Record Again! 40 Years of Videokunst.de Part 2, Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM), Karlsruhe, July 17 - September 6, 2009 (G, C)
    • Nan Hoover: “I am a painter”. Early video works and late print works, Soledad Senile Gallery, Amsterdam, April 4 - May 17, 2009
    • Ars Luminosa VI Lichtgestalten: Shadow creatures, art space, Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Stuttgart, October 25, 2009 - January 24, 2010 (G)
    • Nan Hoover - Lightscapes, Centrum Kunstlicht in de Kunst, Eindhoven, February 17 - May 19, 2009
    • Deep North. Transmediale 09, House of World Cultures, Berlin, January 27 - February 1, 2009 (G)
    • Video lounge 2009, Galerie Dieter Reitz, Berlin, 2009
    • Fluchten, Artists' Association Walkmühle, Wiesbaden, May 16 - June 28, 2009 (G)
    • Movement in Light, Dutch Art Institute, University Twente, Twente, 2009
    • Overzicht 35 jaar beeldende art festivals in Arnhem, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, September 12th - October 24th 2009 (G)
  • 2008
    • Nan Hoover. Photography and video works 1981–2007, Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden -Rot, November 2 - January 18, 2009
    • Nan Hoover. Recent photographs and drawings, Suzanne Biederberg Gallery, Amsterdam, November 8th - December 6th, 2008
    • Nan Hoover. Drawing, sculpture, video, Galerie Dieter Reitz, Berlin, September 25th - November 8th, 2008
    • Breeze, Nelson-Freeman Gallery, Paris, September 20 - October 31, 2008 (G)
    • Meeting Nan Hoover. Presentation of a videoportrait by Sam Schoenbaum, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, October 23, 2008
    • Museum Wiesbaden, October 30, 2008
    • Uit de Tijd, De Service Garage, Amsterdam, September 24th - October 19th, 2008 (G)
    • Nan Hoover. Gestures, Sebastian Fath Contemporary, Mannheim, 2008
    • Nan Hoover and Bill Viola. Some Times, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, March 20 - July 6, 2008
    • Nan Hoover, XRAY Gallery, Lubon, Poland, October 22, 2007 - October 22, 2008

For exhibitions until 2007 see www.nan-hoover.com

Performances (selection)

  • 1976-1977 video performance
  • Light performance 1976 in Berlin
  • 1978 movement in dark
  • 1979 progressions
  • 1981 Doors, in Stuttgart
  • 1981 Performance Eins, in Berlin

Awards

Web links

Commons : Nan Hoover  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nan Hoover selected group exhibitions
  2. ↑ imai Foundation, Düsseldorf, online catalog (accessed on: February 6, 2013 4:08 pm)
  3. ↑ Swiss Institute for Art Research : Compendium of Image Disturbances in Analog Video , Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2013, pp. 54–55, 244–245, 248, ISBN 978-3-8758-5184-7 .
  4. ^ Entry on Hoover, Nan in the DAAD's Berlin artist program.
personal data
SURNAME Hoover, Nan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hoover, Nancy (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American and Dutch media artist, video artist, performer, light artist, painter, draftsman, photographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 2008
Place of death Berlin