Henriette Simon

Henriette Simon was born in Berlin in 1951 and grew up in Germany and the USA. In 1980 she was introduced to the vibrant New York art scene by the artist Franklin Alexander, whom she met in 1980. While there, she studied painting at the State University of New York – Albany and participated in Woodstock art summer camps. 1983 she returned to Berlin, where she studied Srt Education under F.C. Bernstein and Painting under Prof. Hartmut Friedrich at the Hochschule der Künste

In her work, Simon grants the largest freedom to the material of paint, namely through the application of home-mixed color, to which she often adds sand, soil or similar elements, in order to provide it with more substance. Usually, the surface of her paintings is defined by a supporting yet multiply differentiated color tone, such as earthy brown or glowing red. To this, Simon adds nervously gestural drawings or tactile sand objects. Here, not only the sand, but also the influence of the "New York School" derived from the Abstract Modern Art Movement leaves traces in her paintings.

By consequence, Simon's works cannot be grasped at first sight. Rather they internalize the idea that the viewer should not be dictated what to see; the idea to direct the viewer back toward himself, "to remove him from the sphere of the obligation to be rational."

The process of formation of the unformed matter simultaneously constitutes the message that Simon's images convey. Through limited intervention, and by leaving room for non-rational creation, coincidence and the specific behavior of the medium, the works reveal patterns and principles that are paralleled in the primal systems of nature. Through destruction and renewed formation, through growth and change, Simon's works are not reflections of nature, but re-lived reality.

Dr. Barbara Aust-Wegemund