Heli-Art. Heiner Boerger

About

The exhibition contains series of paintings including the tale of the Nine Glorious Knights, The Equatorials – Think about Freedom and The Time Flight.

Dr. Heiner Boerger – Artist and Pilot, born in 1960 in Duisburg, Germany.

His education on the field of communication and design at the Hochschule der Kuenste (Academy of Arts) in Berlin (amongst others with Prof. Wolfgang Krebs) was completed in 1986.

At this time only the western part of Berlin was free and lay like an island in the midst of the communist ruled GDR.

Boerger was inspired by the artistic and liberal environment of West-Berlin. He was present in Berlin on November 9th 1989 and experienced first-hand the falling of the wall and the start of a new era of liberty and freedom for all Germans.

After his dissertation under Prof. Posner-Landsch, Boerger founded an event agency in Frankfurt, Germany. Here he used his creative talent to work as a producer and director of live performances, film production and music productions.

In 1999 he successfully completed the training required to become a helicopter pilot. In early 2004 after several years of flying, Boerger fulfilled his greatest dream: he received the inspiration to build bridges and combine art with flying.

Influenced by the universal approach of Renaissance, and inspired by modern performance artists such as Pollock or Christo, he began to create a new and unique form of art: “HELI-ART”.

In so doing, the artist creates spectacular work using a helicopter at symbolic locations around the globe.

HELI-ART is a spectacular form of action painting and it is unique in the world. The resulting art-work (so called “Heli-Paintings”) is a its heart, nothing more than the traces of flying in the truest sense of the word. The German artist Heiner Boerger brings his artwork into being by using a helicopter.

This extraordinary form of production enriches contemporary art with a totally new and wild perspective.

Liquid colors, a high powered helicopter, the blustering down wash, gently controlled skids and pure nature are the contrasting artistic ingredients necessary to create his stunning form of art.

Initially, the canvases are firmly anchored to the ground and soaked with liquid colors. After which Heiner impressively flies over them with the helicopter. He hovers, pauses, lands, cavorts, allowing the bright colors to truly vibrate.

His series of paintings include:

The Glorious Nine:

A legend is entwined around the tale of the Nine Glorious Knights.

A tale of only nine men, who are said, to have bravely defended their fortress, which was full of woman and children, against overwhelming enemy forces. They did so until assistance from they allies, finally, showed up.

This series boldly shouts out the brutality and cruelty that existed during wars in medieval times. The metallic gray of the knights' armor, albeit barely visible under the sheer red of split blood, is to be seen.

Blades of grass, tiny twigs and dust on the canvas, reminds us of the suffering in the battlefield.

The black colored skids of the helicopter were employed symbolically like the lance of a knight. With great gousto, the artist flew at the canvases leaving long and deep scars in the dripping red.

The Time Flight:

Inspired by the concept of time, these series consisting of 24 single paintings, reflects the 24 hours of the day. Arranged like the dial of a clock, these series of artwork was created in exactly one hour: exactly at the change from the summer time to the winter time, namely on October, 25th 2009, at 2:00am, these series were born.

At this hour, the lack of sunlight drapes our world with deep dark black. In contrast, the colors of "Time Flight" contain a whole magnitude of colors associated with sunlight.

Deep blue represents the hours of the night; green and turquoise express the fresh mood of the morning; and whilst yellow marks noon, and orange stands for afternoon, intense red leads the day with warm tones to an end.

With gold-laden skids, the artists landed on 24 paintings in the same sequence as the hands moving around a clock face.

The Equatorials – Think about Freedom:

In this project Heiner intends to thoroughly examine the subject of Freedom by testing and crossing barriers and borders.

Can freedom be absolute? Or, is it by its very nature contained within borders and limitations? These terms used in conjunction contradict the idea of equality whilst creating diversity. They create room for change, differing interpretations of rules, traditions and language. Limitations may restrict freedom, but they provide for and guarantee it.

Representing the world's longest borderline, the equator served as an optimal stage for the start of the new conceptual series of artwork.

In central Africa, at the foot of the Mount Kenia, the artist strikingly overrode the equator as a borderline. The red line depicted on all the Equatorials, shows the exact position of the Equator during the creation of the series.