Krempp Gallery to feature work of South Carolina painter for April
Greenville, S.C. painter, Hilary Siber is the featured artist at the Krempp Gallery for the month of April.
Siber works directly from observation. Her work utilizes landscapes to visually grapple with the constitution of the medium as a means of representing the ineffable qualities of human experiences. Siber is continually interested in the duality of a fixed and ostensibly stable location that is simultaneously vulnerable, shifting and in flux.
“Our vantage point is critical in elucidating this tension-filled paradox. Thus, I am continually interested in the formal cues used in spatial representation as platforms to investigate and subvert our perceptions,” Siber said. “Horizon lines, open plains, fissures, architectures and panoramas found within a landscape are opportunities that I use to build new spaces within the field of my canvases. It is my hope that the finished results exemplifies that struggle, and opens up a greater dialogue that lives beyond the picture plane.”
Hilary Siber perceives that our world is ever-changing. “I believe that as humans, we are not static creatures, but complex beings living in a complex, beautiful and broken world. External factors influence and engage our self-construction. Unforeseen conflicts arise. Life is not as we think we see it. One small shift in a vantage point can easily undo the very ground underneath our feet, fragmenting our history of understanding. And while these fragments pierce us deeply, they are the pieces used to reconstitute a new understanding of self. Our humanity is caught up in this beautiful paradox; the dismantling of self is the very beginning of our reconstruction,” she said. “Our afflictions and trials produce a greater glory for our having walked through them.”
As a painter she is aware of how painting communicates, but within her work she hopes to recognize where the rhetoric of painting falls short in explicating the complexities of our existence.
“I believe that the illusion of realism fails, the mark of expressionism fails, the eye of the viewer fails and the body of the artist fails, but it is my hope that together these components can accumulate to more closely convey our destabilized humanity,” she said. “Failed attempts of communication and expression can point towards a hope for regeneration and purpose amongst the broken visions and ruptures of paint.”
Hilary Siber holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art with an emphasis in environmental design and a semester of coursework in architecture and urban planning from Studio Art Center International in Florence, Italy. In 2015 she graduated from Clemson University with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Art with an emphasis in painting.
To learn more about the artist, visit her website at, http://www.hilarysiber.com.
Meet the artist and listen to a Gallery Talk at the Opening Reception on at the Krempp Gallery on FRIDAY, April 7th, 2017 from 5:00- 7:00 pm. Cash bar and refreshments will be served. This is a free, family-friendly evening out.
The Krempp Gallery, located in the Jasper Arts Center adjacent to the VUJC campus, is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:30 am to 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. on Thursdays, and Sunday from noon to 3 pm. School groups, clubs, and students are welcome. Admission is free.
