Ika Huber: Coelin

Beauty

In his text, Rudi Fuchs carefully and precisely approaches the new works of the artist, who was born in Freiburg in 1953 and lives there. The volume "Coelin", as the special blue she uses in her works is called, naturally also allows a look at older works that are more figuratively characterised. In this way, the book makes visible the transition to Ika Huber's very own form of abstraction, how the brushstroke recognisable in the earthy brown, which is still figuratively bound, becomes detached and becomes a free form. This leads the eye into the movement of the brushstroke, and Rudi Fuchs says that if these paintings had a voice, "they would whisper". Ika Huber also lays such a "sound" over preliminary chalk drawings, where the flow of the brush is framed and scaffolded. And of course you can also hear it in the watercolours. Rudi Fuchs concludes his praise of Ika Huber with a line from the eccentric Thomas Lovell Beddoes: "A lake / Is a river, coiled and slumbering like a snake", thus returning once again to the meaning of Ika Huber's approach, which allows us to see the picture from the very beginning and recognise it at every step, achieving an intensity that he simply calls "beauty".