Untitled

Born into a family of Jewish textile merchants in the Saar region of Germany in the wake of World War II, Hannelore Barons artistic practice centered around themes of concealment and protection that were directly influenced by the personal tragedies her family suffered on Kristallnact, and the subsequent period of transience and border crossing that persisted until the family managed to emigrate from Lisbon to New York in 1941. Scared by the memory of the wreckage of her childhood home, Baron fashioned her constructions out of ordinary and often rough materials in order to translate the painful experiences of her life into undeniable images of darkness and mystery. In 1969, Baron embarked on a series of box constructions what would become her most celebrated series. In these works, damaged wood and metal, often tied or nailed together, enclose secrets that can only be guessed at: scraps of her past, mysterious games without rules, concealed objects. In their rawness and obscurity they form the necessary counterpart to Joseph Cornells elegant enigmas. As such, Untitled conveys the artists sense of the fragility of life, the mythic substratum of human experience, and broader concerns for the environment, the injustices of war, and the physical pain of existence.