"Nephilism (Greek: nephele = fog) describes a new style of art created by Helga Palmisano where the object is connected blurred and foggy to the strange background, conjuring an evocating moment into the painting. Therewith they open a new awareness for the blur of affirmed extremes to the observer, show the limits of the classic dualistic view of the world of foreground/background, heaven/hell, good/bad, detaching objects from their background, devaluate them from their hitherto context, introduce new values and meanings, try to give a new context to the objects contemporaneously nullifying it in a unremittingly movement with permanent floating borders not least due to the non existing flow in the oil paintings. Similar to Derrida's de-construction on textual level they open the awareness for other, oppressed or contradictory truths and significances. They don't show that truth and significance wouldn't be possible, rather that truths contain significances which can completely change in front of modified backgrounds. By abolishing the thinking of borders they blow up the borders of thinking disclosing up a method to prise old thinking structures open . Just as no absolute truth is existing, eliminating the otherwise pin sharp borders between depicted objects and background they show that apparently conflicting meanings blur diffused, can be true at the same time. Typical for Nephelism are the characteristic blurred indications which are visible only by fuzzy and coloured spots, are characterised by the observer as objects only due to the relative position and size in the painting which requisites an enormous mental performance from the observer making these paintings appear interesting, even after years."

Gudo Stepken
Aachen, September 2006

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Inaugural address of Dr. Dirk Tölke on the occasion of the exhibition at Eschweiler Art Club from March 08th to March 22nd, 2009

Katalysers of Lust for Life

Who doesn't know it, the silent melancholy, when a lovely moment, which you would like to retain, is going to the end, or even the intensity with which you soak up the sensual presence of a natural mood, the observance of a beautiful shape or the warmth of a human encounter. "Linger On", which is also a title of Helga Palmisano's group of works, in detail: "Stay wink, you are so beautiful" - you should go when it's most beautiful. As host and late guest you still muse in high spirits and with pleasure amongst the splits instead, well-fed at decaying music. When it's most beautiful Helga Palmisano soaks up optically, then she visualizes what she wants to retain, then she casually takes photos as picturesque memorization-bearer: a party, a holiday evening, flitting light on stirred water, juicy plants-details, a visit to the market full of optical attractions. All this is longing, is enriched with good humour, delighted by the impressions of which she can't get enough of and due to her fixation of the images, we neither. Full of relish contemplativeness and visualized that way, displaces somebody on short term from the progress of time, saturated with vitality, which she shares and discloses.
Helga Palmisano's paintings try to banish this intensity and they succeed in making it perceptible once again. Holiday feeling, apart of kitschy old fashioned postcard themes or cliches confirming of having been there. No tourist marketing, no portraits, but generalized to the individual case of experience, positive exaltation for the beauty of the world and the moments. Paintings which try to trap the moments into mood-protocols. How is this going to be effective with oil on canvas?
Helga Palmisano paints objective and at a first view photo-realistic. Ske keeps staying concrete. Nevertheless, two target courses can be identified. Still lifes and life-stills. You will see detail blown-ups of natural objects and natural products: juicy, sensual colour-batten paintings full of foodstuff and vitality getting a latent rapture from reality but nevertheless not appaering clinical and artificial but create sensual-wishful desire.
There is fruit divesting in nearly lustful due-freshness their juiciness, crisp and colour-resplendence. Lusciously glazing from varnish and pigment-density they are still no mocked photos, no advertising settings or biologic preparations but construed nature-goods, life signs, stills, joint-painted taste, catalyzers of indulgence.
On the other side Helga Palmisano describes in matt diffidence but with well located, covered gaudy-painted situations breathing atmospheric aftertaste or situation-protokols of moods which are not of positive reminders or hopeful guesses only like the captured detail, nearly "Magritte"-stylish surreal image-joke poetics typified managertypes.
Helga Palmisano's focus to the life namly also registers seismographic moods of consternation, discomfort and surprise if it's about topical events. Brouhaha, insurrections and adiposes "Stepmakers" are equally meaningful to her, here just for example crisis-sticking business decision-makers trotting as a herd on unsafe ground.
With this series of works a conscious outshining, a glittering, foggy or blinding transition of colourscale provides the basis of avoiding the impression to only copy a photo on canvas. Her means of illustrations rather alike to fuzzy souvenir pictures which all of us carry inside and which also owns this latent incompletness and focussed fuzzyness if we want to call them up again.
Despite the fuzzyness the context is always visible in Helga Palmisano's paintings. With clearly recognizable subjects and coherences, with traceable gesture and mimic but without detailed definition of particular persons or individual features Helga Palmisano allows general impressions to become pictorial. Both of them, obscurity and colourshift, provide auxiliary means to indicate the optical aftertaste of impressive occurences.
For Helga Palmisano these paintings also have the character of a personal diary of sentience. For this intension she selects moments and microcosmos and "calebrates" them on canvas.
Native-born in Aachen and having her studio back to Kornelimünster since 2005 again, she learned her tools during long years of apprenticeship and travel in Düsseldorf and elswhere, amongst others also by study visits in Italy and Zimbabwe. Her stylic mean is the crossfading outline-blur of merging colour transition, a plaining blurring-strategy which she named Nephelism after the greek word for fog.
This flashcoloured plain-painting ("Lucky you!") casually reminding of Macke, is intensified and self-contained due to missing brush-duct. Any striking graphical astringence is however avoided by the obscurity of the contours which leave the impression of fleeing, virtually flats withdrawn by suction. The aspect of personal perspective is supported by the natural appearence but in their snapshot-constellation they obviously act as compositions which are leaned on photos. Visual wittiness and power of observation of alacritous (room 1) and explosive themes (room 3) reports the awake mind which could not be coined enough by parties, lifestyle and wellness. The shadeful chromaticity, affected by Neon, Web and Advertising, is clearly present in its blunt but is also definitely an exceptional self-determined palette.
Now you can get your own idea of how masterly, colour-ablied and pictorially skilled she is able to convert her light-flooded and sometimes light-overflooded image spaces.

Dr. Dirk Tölke
Aachen, March 2009