Ulla Hasen

Born in 1966 in the south of Vienna

1996 Master Degree of Landscape Ecology and Planning of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna

Since 1997 working as a public official for the City Administration of Vienna on the topics of nature protection, international wildlife trade and since 2004 on sustainable development

Ulla grew up standing behind her grandfather watching him painting naturalistic landscapes. She did ornamental drawings as a child, but never got any proportions right. Drawing and painting never seemed an option for her also due to the lack of idea what to depict.

But accompanying her studies in natural sciences and ongoing in the following decades she very much enjoyed to attend lectures at the University of Vienna and the academy of fine arts Vienna on aesthetics, anthropology and cultural studies held by Konrad Paul Liessmann, Elisabeth von Samsonow and Peter Sloterdijk, complemented since 2016 by lectures on history of arts at the University of Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Ulla started making pictures in 2019 after having gained distance to the idea of depicting something given.

Since then she attends classes in acrylic painting by Haider Al-Zubaidi and since 2020 also by Udo Hohenberger.

 

On the principles of her art

Sustainability – preserving our globe as daily business; fatigue on the end of the day, when the believe in the controllability of processes perishes. The arrival in the exhausted body, which cannot keep up with the knowledge.

It remains the body with its experience of the world, with its engravings of the trials to understand – being stage („Schauplatz“), involuntary and undesired most of the time. „Schau-Platz sein“ - being a raised stand. Why not? Scoop out of the emptiness after the end of any certitude. Observe what happens, if one spreads colour on paper with no intention. Which invisible path does the arm follow? What arises? Does it mean something to me? Shadows of familiar scenes emerge as islands on the white ground, or is it merely a tribute to my imagination? Does that matter? No. The white of the paper begins to flourish. Spaces sufficiently open for being projection screens for own experiences evolve. Is it the edge over there or the dot, is it the reflection of light in an unexpected position which involves me into a dialog? Pause for a moment, cease from action - the joy of looking as the paper and colour started to talk to me.

She begin to understand, what playing is about and greet Friedrich Schiller silently cross-centuries.