Four further Transluzide in the exhibition at Kunstmuseum Ahlen, titled Fassaden I-V (2013), are a consistent continuation of Margareta Hesse’s characteristic way of working on the one hand, whilst on the other they unlock completely new and enigmatic perspectives to the series at surprisingly new visual levels. Whilst the selection of visual materials and her artistic techniques, and therefore the strict conceptual approach in Margareta Hesse’s oeuvre, remains more or less unchanged in these works, her most recent works in the ongoing series Transluzide have not only increased in terms of dimensions (160 x 250 x 10 cm each), but also combine her primary interest of mixing colour and its effects as well as the depiction of non-figurative elements, with photographic elements, which initially confound the viewer in their move towards pure figuration and reproduction. However, the manner in which – and what – Margareta Hesse incorporates as recognisable figuration into this new Transluzide work series, does not remain confusing or contradictory for long on closer examination. The clear geometry of the compositional structure of the conceptual works derives from Margareta Hesse’s photographs of buildings in her hometown Berlin, showing the architectural grids of façades which in their addition nevertheless remain formally and aesthetically coherent. The modular and gridded views of windows and balconies were transferred, as fragments in the form of black and white negatives on transparent sheets, to the rear polyester panel, which acts as the first semantic and “foundational” visual layer of the work.
Fassaden I und II with their balcony imagery are compellingly combined with grid patterns of irregular circular forms created with a light silicon paste, whilst the historical façade elements of Fassaden III und IV with their cell and stripe structure are formed using an organic resinous shellac. What in Fassaden I und II appear, when seen frontally by the viewer, as flat circular forms, seem more like organic cocoons when viewed from the side which, whether open or closed, are up to 10 cm high and which display individual form as well as slightly differing alignments. It is therefore possible to either read these formal structures in a purely if slightly irregular geometrical sense or, focussing on their wealth of semantic associations, perceive the emotional expressivity of the colour as a subtle element of tension in the pictures, which address such aspects as individual feelings of security, nest-like shelters, quiet retreats and homeliness and privacy within a relatively anonymous, monotonous and desolate modern urban architecture. The emotional expressivity of the dominant red lacquer again combines the structurally inherent elements of Fassaden I bis IV into a multilayered overall effect, which may be perceived as a multilayered play of light and shadow, which in Margareta Hesse’s work always results in a complex interplay of colour and form. Likewise in this specific case the photographic element which has been used, is self-referentially reduced to its original structural interplay of light and shadow and subsequently deconstructed. The foregrounding of the semantic potential of photography as a mirror of reality is in a double respect equivocally displaced to the background
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section of the text LIGHTZONES, from Colour to Light, from the Material to the Immaterial, from the Rational to the Emotional, by Pamela Scorzin in “LIGHTZONES”, published by Kunstmuseum Ahlen 2013