BIOGRAPHY
The self-taught painter, Ilja Freer, processes many stages of his life in abstract acrylic paintings. He was born in Berlin in 1976 and has enjoyed painting and drawing since he was a little boy.
In the 90’s he experienced the fall of the Berlin wall as a teenager. Everywhere in the city something new developed almost overnight. He and his friends took care of the mostly gray facades of the city and designed them as colorful works of art as a graffiti artist.
That was his contribution during this time to make the city more colorful and to make it a place where everyone who wants to change something is welcome.
Since 2019 he has swapped the spray cans for spatulas and brushes again. He experiments a lot with color and technique in his work as an artist. He likes to play intuitively with the deviating norm from reality.
CV
He has already taken part in exhibitions in Berlin, Madrid, Milan and at Art Innsbruck with his pictures. A large number of pictures are already hanging with collectors and art lovers in Europe and the US.
STATEMENT
Through my artworks, I break away from the common ideas and norms of society as to how some-thing should be. In my colorful abstract pictures I connect reality with the deviating norm and intuitively create a new perspective on things and forms. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you can do it. Then just think differently than the others. You are you and you are different. Do what you love with passion. Be wild, rebellious, unusual – be who you want to be and not how others want you to be. Believe in yourself, then you can do anything. To everyone who thinks differently: the rebels, the idealists, the visionaries, the unconventional thinkers, those who don’t let themselves be squeezed into a scheme, those who see things differently. “See straight around the corner” As an artist, I feel a kind of urgent energy that guides me through my work. Safety and routine when proceeding is one option, curiosity and experimentation is the other. My goal is to raise the intensity of the interaction of composition and color to a higher level. I want to explore that anew with every picture. The focus of my work is the material presence of co-lor, its expressiveness and spatial effect. The images are created by juxtaposing, superimposing, removing color or colored surfaces. Each color is related to the one next to it, to the one behind it and to the one above it, and of course to the whole. Color tones intensify, there are dissonances or a different color brings calm back into the composition. Although each color stands alone, it can only achieve its full potential through the interaction of all colors.
