“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
— Carl Gustav Jung
Artist Statement
I am interested in the human being caught between the inner world and external reality.
In my figurative paintings, I explore inner and interpersonal states and the ways in which our experiences, relationships, and self-image are shaped by social conditions. Individual needs encounter expectations, roles, and social norms; unconscious impulses coexist with conscious decisions. I am particularly interested in the space in between – where contradictory feelings exist simultaneously and cannot be resolved into a single, definitive position.
My many years of psychoanalytic work and my engagement with Analytical Psychology, following the tradition of C. G. Jung, have sharpened my awareness of these processes. Concepts such as the shadow, inner oppositions, and unconscious dynamics are not subjects that I seek to illustrate. Rather, they form part of the experiential background through which I perceive people and their relationships.
The human figure becomes a vehicle for these tensions in my work. Naturalistically rendered bodies encounter shadow-like, fragmented, and abstracted forms. Figures overlap, become permeable, merge into one another, or appear to struggle with each other. The dissolution of form itself becomes a way of making inner movements and ambivalence visible.
My aim is not psychological certainty or explanation. Rather, I seek to evoke states in which closeness and distance, need and autonomy, vulnerability and self-assertion can coexist.
My work moves between individual experience and social reality. It asks what shapes us, what continues to act within us, and how we repeatedly reposition ourselves within the conditions in which we live.
Alongside figurative painting, I continue to work in abstraction and landscape. Here, too, I am interested in perception, change, and transformation, increasingly approached from an open, less representational perspective.
Biography
Hilla Hölter is a painter living and working in Brandenburg and Berlin, Germany. She developed an interest in painting at an early age. After studying psychology in Berlin, she trained as a psychoanalyst in the tradition of Analytical Psychology following C. G. Jung and has worked in private practice since 2000.
During the pandemic, painting increasingly developed into an independent artistic practice alongside her psychoanalytic work. Since then, Hölter has devoted herself intensively to developing her painting and continuously expands her artistic knowledge and skills through workshops and courses.
Beginning with landscape and abstraction, Hölter’s artistic focus has increasingly shifted towards figurative painting. The human figure is at the centre of her current work. Her long-standing engagement with inner conflicts, unconscious processes, and interpersonal dynamics informs her perception of the human being, as does her interest in the ways individual experiences are shaped by social and societal conditions.
Alongside her figurative work, Hölter continues to create abstract and landscape-based paintings.
Exhibitions:
- 2026, July — Solo exhibition accompanying the concert series Begegnungen, Kulturpraline Tornow
- 2025, June–July — Solo exhibition accompanying the concert series Horizonte, Kulturpraline Tornow
- 2024, October 13 – December 20 — Solo exhibition, Institut für Psychotherapie Berlin
- 2024, June–July — Solo exhibition accompanying the concert series Duo und Trio, Kulturpraline Tornow
- 2023, June–July — Solo exhibition accompanying the concert series Solo und Duo, Kulturpraline Tornow2025 June July Accompanying solo exhibition to the concert series Horizonte in the Kulturpraline Tornow