Amy Hilton: Questions of Energy

“Between the fixity of the stone and the mental effervescence, a kind of current is established where I find for a moment, memorable it is true, wisdom and comfort. For a moment, I would see in it the possible germ of a new and paradoxical kind of mysticism. Like the others, it would lead the soul to the silence of half an hour, it would lead it to dissolve in some inhuman immensity. But this abyss would have nothing divine about it and would even be all matter and matter alone, the active and turbulent matter of lavas and fusions, of earthquakes, orgasms and great tectonic rituals; and the immobile matter of the longest quietude.” – Roger Caillois (Pierres, Gallimard, 1966)

Amy Hilton’s work invites us to travel, a journey of the body and thought through sensitive elements that originate in the artist’s relationship with a certain form of spirituality. The resonances at play here do not, however, require any particular knowledge and the works proposed open us up, above all, to a use of space, light and colour, an itinerary where objects and images, sculptures and drawings coexist and dialogue. A physical and mental cartography, the device proposed by the artist unfolds in various materialities imbued with her Theosophical research, but which also challenge us as effective presences revealing their vitality and their particular qualities.

Thus, the sculptures in stones of different textures, are above all the repositories of a time of origins, suspended, both immemorial and present, made possible by contemplation alone. If the stones have a form, they first have a history that presides over them, and the reverie on the origin affirms that the rock does not lack time, and that it is the living witness of the world since its beginnings. It is in the artist’s vocabulary that the possibility of expressing the mineral world in all its diversity is born, that the world can be named anew, and perhaps also that of another way of apprehending it. It is a question of considering a present state of matter and proposing a superposition of periods and forms. Sandstone, red travertine, white marble, onyx, rock crystal… This enumeration of the elements used, their differences and their intrinsic qualities, allows us to approach the abundance of the mineral world and the symbolic charge of the forms which are proposed to us.

Five lines of different stones of similar geometry are laid out on the floor like figures of an elementary flow, from the earth to the ether, they are the necessary steps for the emergence of an inner experience that seeks to transcend matter to grasp its spiritual resonances, a “breath of the soul” that would allow, beyond simple observation, the passage to a more harmonious state of the universe. Drawings and pastels on the walls echo the sculptures and the delicacy of the colours both prolongs and sublimates the fragile density of the rocks.

Everything in Amy Hilton’s work tends towards the search for a balance between the elements and the vibrations induced by their presence, everything is combined in the controlled tension of the forms and the energies that they release to exercise us in other ways of seeing, of grasping the multiple facets of a subtle reality in which different modes of existence are at play.

“Subtle Energy” a solo exhibition of new work was presented at Spazio Nobile Gallery between 9.9-6.11.2022

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