A mon seul Désir
A mon seul Désir is the title of one of the carpets from the 15th century’s mille-fleurs-series ‘the lady with the unicorn from Musée de Cluny in Paris. The six wall carpets create a melting pot of humans’ sensorial perceptions. The 6th carpet a mon seul desir could be interpreted as a voluntarily renunciation of the sensorial sensations in favour of the higher shape of perception. In doing so, love will raise to a higher, spiritual experience level. The flowers that surround the lady and the unicorn, represent just as much sensorial sensations, but can also be interpreted as higher experiences of one’s being. This area between the mondaine and the metaphysic inspires Thomas Hillebrand to create glass sculptures.

In 2003/2004 snow globes became the inspiration to make the first standing water domes of glass. Hillebrand creates places of memories in his domes: not like the common snow globes you see with the Eiffel tower or Tiroler landscapes within them. His worlds are being filled with a game of light, shapes and colours. They don’t remind of a tangible world, just as it stays uncertain whether it is a memory of the past, or more a memory of the idea of the impossible, of feelings, of the subconscious.

Just like the domes, his sensual globe-shaped hanging mirrors give a distorted perception of reality. This time not as a result of the distortion of reality caused by the water and the light, but because of the fact that the globular surface shrinks and deformedly reflects the surroundings in which the spectator stands. While it’s only possible to look into the domes from outside, the mirrors suck the spectator to the image by means of reflection. For a moment you are part of the world that the artist shows you through this image. The external globular shape pulls you inside. Is it that, with A mon Seul Désir the artist wants to take us to ‘the beauty’, the inner appetence? Not as a utopian body of thought or escapism, though to offer an experience of beauty in our daily reality.

This text has come about on account of a conversation between Thomas Hillebrand, Tom Lenders and Mandy Prins