Hans

Neleman

Hans Neleman utilizes fragments of paper to create visual rhythms that are raw and poetic. His use of repetition not only enhances the aesthetic appeal but also serves as a means to investigate the idea of unity in the presence of diversity, and to underscore the elegance of simplicity within complexity. In his works boundaries become indistinct, memories leave lasting impressions, and time merges into an eternal moment.

I am fascinated by collage because of the power embedded in historical fragmentation and the ability to reassemble and combine individual elements to ultimately recreate new meaning and a contemporary whole. Collage, to me, means that moments from history can be retold as modern tales. The creative process is much like poetry, offering a place where the conscious and the subconscious can dance together. I enjoy distressing and painting on my collages, building the layers into further abstraction and enhancing the tactile qualities of the surface to make visible the continuum between the past and the present.

Hans Neleman

For more than 30 years, I have maintained a career in photography that has afforded wide creative license and acclaim. My work always blurred commerce and art, and I have also thoroughly enjoyed teaching about the importance of continually nourishing one’s personal vision. Assimilating my own lesson, I refocused my career on fine arts shifting to assemblage, collage, and painting. My work expands on the longstanding themes from my photography: finding beauty in darkness and searching for harmony in opposites. Recently, history has become increasingly integral to my practice as well. I use vintage books and imagery of classical statues for the collage works that appear as cross-generational dialogues between figuration and abstraction.

The identities and symbolic meanings of the classical representations partly disappear and meld into surrealist compositions where moments from history are retold as modern tales. For the non-figurative work, I source the peripheral areas of the vintage pages and compose the ripped pieces, distressing and painting the work, building the layers into contemporary abstraction. Once assembled as paper collages on canvas and viewed up close, the work can seem rather unstructured and unconnected. Yet when viewed from further back, the seeming disarray appears graphic and coherent. Perhaps an allegory—that human fragmentation and chaos actually hems to historical patterns of behavior, and that understanding of this continuity only comes with distance.

Hans Neleman

Hans Neleman was born in 1960 in The Netherlands. He is currently based in New Canaan, Connecticut.