Tina Gillen

In Tina Gillen’s (b. 1972, Luxembourg) paintings, the subject depicted is often reduced to its simplest elements. Her works present figurative worlds counterbalanced by abstract forms and the back-and-forth movement between these two dimensions wisely balances the great mastery of the pictorial vocabulary and a certain ‘letting go’ in the execution, a certain rigour in the composition and a more intuitive approach. Both surface and space compete for the viewer’s attention, resulting in a complex confusion, a charged atmosphere. The linear perspective appears abolished and the perception unsettled. The point of departure for her paintings is usually located in photographs stemming from various contexts – magazines, the Internet, postcards, etc. – which Gillen subjects to a process of reduction and abstraction: ‘I remove things in order to, paradoxically, reach a certain readability. I emphasize the abstraction by keeping just the strict minimum.’

Chasing Light (2018–19) depicts one of Tina GiIlen's (b. 1972, Luxembourg) favourite subjects, the architecture of private housing. Painted from a photograph of a modernist villa in a suburb of Brussels, the building is depicted in stormy conditions, sharply contrasting the sleek white surfaces of the architecture and its shadowy surroundings, highlighting the abstract quality of the structure.