Interview: Ulla Hasen
Luca Curci talks with Ulla Hasen during LONDON CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2021 at THE LINE Contemporary Art Space.

“Accompanying my studies in natural and technical sciences and later my work in the field of environmental protection and sustainability, I very much enjoyed attending lectures at different Viennese Universities on philosophy, cultural studies and history of arts. I started taking pictures myself only after having gained distance to the idea of depicting something given or imagined”.

Luca Curci – What is art for you?
Ulla Hasen – I appreciate a broad spectrum of different approaches to art. But as for my own works art is a genuine way how life expresses itself in an integrative way.

LC – What’s your background? What is the experience that has influenced your work the most?
UH – Grown up in a world of craftsmanship, being educated as a technician with an ecological focus, I experience the limits of intended action in my daily work when trying to implement sustainability. The very different experience underlying my artworks is the one of playing like explicated by Friedrich Schiller in his inquiry on aesthetic education.

LC – Did your style change over the years? In which way?
UH – My style is experimental and evolves slowly along with contingent differences by exploring them in depth.

LC – Which art themes do you pursue? What is your preferred subject, if there is any?
UH – My work is driven by the underlying theme of resonance as a mode of being, thus not pursuing an identified theme, although themes e.g. like abstract landscapes emerge in my works.

LC – What is your creative process like?
UH – My works are a result of the moment when at the end of the day the belief in the controllability of processes perishes and fatigue takes over. When the body with its experience of the world remains, with its engravings of the attempts to understand. Scooping out of the emptiness after the end of any certitude and observing what happens, if one spreads color on paper with no intention: Which invisible path does the arm follow? What arises? Does it mean something to me? Shadows of familiar scenes emerge as islands on the white ground, or is it merely a tribute to my imagination? Does that matter? No. The white of the paper begins to flourish. Is it the edge over there or the dot, is it the reflection of light in an unexpected position that involves me in a dialog? Pause for a moment, cease from the action – the joy of contemplating as the paper and color started to talk to me.

LC – Can you explain something about the artworks you have in our exhibition?
UH – My presented work “A Tribute to Lyotard’s Angel” refers to the moment of mere presence, where the being reveals itself beyond any meaning and beyond time. It´s a weird experience, which can´t be represented by an object – like a picture – being subject to time and space. However, man has ever since tried to find ways to represent this moment, especially in artworks. For me, this merely aesthetic artwork functions as a fragile monument of remembrance and a back-bonding to the sphere of meanings, where the plenitude of life explicates in time.

LC – Do you think ITSLIQUID GROUP can represent an opportunity for artists?
UH – I think it´’s a good opportunity to present art in an international context to a broader public.