Tina Gillen

Tina Gillen graduated from the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Antwerp. In 1997 she was nominated for the Young Belgian Painters Award.

Tina Gillen paints, but here she also displays an interest in the tradition of the silkscreen printing technique. She even establishes links between the two, based on a serious respect for and study of the intrinsic qualities of these mediums.
When asked to select an image for the invitation, an image from ‘reality’ that gave her that feeling of being ‘out of place’, she chose ‘SCHOMMEL / BALANCOIRE’ and ‘PISSOTIERE’. Tina chose the photograph of the tennis court taken during a working visit to France. What is striking about her work is that the image refers to found locations which take on a new lease of life because of the influence of light, the changing sunlight which is also seasonal. She tries to describe this pictorially. The transcription of what she has seen, a form of abstracting, creates a different reality at the break-point between the familiar and the unfamiliar or alienation.
‘FRAGMENT’ is a vestige, a part of a landscape that has survived. It is highly abstracted but retains the idea that it relates to something architectural, though with this image we do not have sufficient information to interpret it as such. It occupies the area of tension between the two.
‘HALL’ was inspired by the image of a sports hall with the screen in the middle. The imposing lines of the court were ‘loosened’ so as to allow a new context to develop; detached from the blue surface, the lines float in the space. The perspective becomes semblance, and suddenly against the background of its origin the singularity of the work manifests itself; it is its own cosmos.