The work of Dil Hildebrand centres on strategies of twofoldedness in painting where the surface operates as a threshold resting between the viewer’s eye and spaces that appear situated deep within the pictorial image.

In paintings that mirror the scale of human figures, abstract shapes are used as a screen beyond and through which pastoral landscapes and botanical gardens are seen. These shapes swing between form and function; speaking the language of formal abstraction while simultaneously interacting with the image as architectural framing. Gate and passageway motifs are used extensively to convey trompe l’oeil effects.

One perceives a distorted version of typical greenhouse architecture: rails of white bring to mind cages and fences, separating the viewer from spaces too far away to touch. Thick passages speak directly to the visceral weight of the paint itself. Scarred surfaces on the paintings point to a restless process of manufacture; space and surface within them appear to be in physical conflict. In these fuzzy painted images we see the artist’s ongoing interest in the capacity for the materials of art to touch upon our awareness in a distinctly physical way.