Srijon Chowdhury
Boundaries of Perception
Words PLUS MAGAZINE
Photography JAE KIM
Each panel is made from cut vinyl records mounted on canvas, framed with quiet precision. The blue is deep and opaque, broken by irregular shapes that recall fragments of stained glass held in place by dark seams. Small passages of yellow, red, green, and turquoise appear intermittently, scattered like punctuation marks across the surface. Up close, the grooves of the records remain visible, curving softly and catching light in restrained arcs. Hildebrandt resisted backlighting the works. “At first I thought about using light from behind, like a light box,” he explains, “but then you lose the lines of the vinyl. You only see light. So I decided to work with transparent vinyl and paint it from the back in white.” The decision keeps the material present. The blue feels dense, physical, and grounded.
The emotional source of the installation begins with a memory. Hildebrandt recalls a window in his grandmother’s house, decorated with birds flying toward a door. Years later, returning to the empty house after she had moved into assisted living, the image resurfaced with force. “Seeing those birds again was very touching for me,” he says. “That memory became the starting point for this work.” The window serves as a seed, expanding through material and repetition to carry meaning beyond narrative.
Another image bridged that memory into architecture. A Bach record sleeve depicting the blue church windows of Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church triggered an immediate connection. “When I saw the church windows on a Bach record cover, I immediately thought about my grandmother’s window,” Hildebrandt says. “For me it was a very small step from that memory to the idea of making a whole room.” That step becomes a full spatial transformation. The installation took years to complete, from 2022 to 2026. Time accumulates in the sheer number of panels, in the subtle variations from tile to tile, and in the patience required to sustain such focus.
The construction choices reinforce Hildebrandt’s commitment to painting as much as installation. Each frame was made in his studio. Metal was tested and discarded. “In the end we decided to cover it with canvas,” he says. That choice matters. Canvas absorbs light differently. It softens the edge between the object and wall. Despite the scale, the work never feels industrial. It retains the intimacy of hand-built decisions repeated thousands of times.
Music remains central to the work, even in its silence. Hildebrandt grew up surrounded by records. “My youngest uncle was like a big brother to me,” he says. “He collected vinyl, and I grew up with records from a very young age.” Vinyl becomes both material and memory. Cut, fragmented, and reassembled, the records lose their sound while retaining their history. Rhythm turns visual. Structure replaces melody. The room holds that transformation quietly, without nostalgia.
Hildebrandt frames the work clearly. “It is not only about looking at individual works,” he says. “It is about creating a space you can experience.” Blau im Gedächtnis succeeds because it commits fully to that ambition. The installation slows the viewer down. Blue recalibrates perception. The room becomes something you inhabit rather than observe. Hildebrandt brings Berlin into New York by constructing an environment that replaces looking with being there.
Gregor Hildebrandt’s “Blau im Gedächtnis” is on view at Perrotin New York, 130 Orchard St, New York, from January 16 to February 18, 2026.
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