Perrotin Hong Kong presents: “Behind My Back, In Front of My Eyes” solo exhibition by Gregor Hildebrandt

Perrotin Hong Kong is pleased to present “Behind My Back, in Front of My Eyes,” a solo exhibition by German artist Gregor Hildebrandt, who is known for using pre-recorded cassette tapes as a medium in his innovative collage paintings. Opening on 25 September 2021, this exhibition marks the artist’s second solo show in the city.

Making use of analogue media, Hildebrandt records the melody, rhythm, and affect of selected songs on empty tapes, then applies the music in its physicalised form to make art. Visualising the music on canvas surfaces, he creates collages he coins “rip-off” paintings. In his latest exhibition “Behind My Back, in Front of My Eyes,” his statement piece “Crystal bits of snowflakes” is inspired by a napkin the artist saw when he was dining in a restaurant near Mount Fuji and the song Big in Japan by German underground synth-pop band Alphaville. Standing in the foyer of the gallery as an introduction to the entrance of each of the two rooms, the diptych-structured painting playfully develops from a ying and yang composition of the exhibition’s motif, a symmetric situation resonating with parallel universes.

Music and sound show how the processes of memory operate through tape loops and echoes, intersecting with the material forces and patterns that compose the artist’s own frame of experience. With “Crystal bits of snowflakes’s” symmetrical arrangement as a point of departure, the artist has created a new series of black-and-white rip-off paintings, which develop on each side of the gallery rooms’ common wall. In this exhibition, the artist also adopts a new technique with acrylic glue, unlike his usual use of adhesive tape, to create colour rip-off paintings for the first time. The colour version of the rip-off series, positioned on the walls of both rooms symmetrically, is made from the VHS tapes that Hildebrandt dubbed from various original films.