Gregor Hildebrandt exhibition, '‘Reglos Nachtet Das MeerThe Sea Falls Into Night Without A Motion’.

Gregor Hildebrandt’s work makes formal references to Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism, and it is nourished by a multitude of literary, cinematographic, musical and architectural influences. He uses these cultural sources to trigger both collective and personal memories. Working mainly with analogue sound storage mediums, the German artist first started using audio cassette tapes in his paintings in the late 1990s, and in the 2000s he became interested in other recording media: VHS tapes and vinyl records. This choice of medium reflects Hildebrandt’s intense love of music, and although it accompanies him at every stage of the artistic process, never does a sound emanate from his works. Instead, sound and lyrics are embedded in the materials themselves, existing only implicitly through titles that inform us partially about their nature.
In August 1913, the Austrian poet Georg Trakl went on his first and only holiday. It led him to Venice. A photograph shows him standing barefoot in the sand at the Lido in a bathing suit, with people swimming in the sea in the background. Inspired by his stay in Venice, Trakl wrote a poem from which the Berlin artist Gregor Hildebrandt borrowed the title of this exhibition almost 109 years later. ‘Reglos Nachtet Das Meer,’ which translates as ‘ The Sea Falls Into Night Without A Motion.’ Venice and its canals, the Lido, the sea-the theme of water flows through the exhibition like a blue-green thread.