BvL welcomes German artist Philipp HAAGER
Bermel von Luxburg Gallery is pleased to welcome German abstract painter PHILIPP HAAGER for our next group exhibition EQUILIBRIUM this September during the BERLIN ART WEEK AND GALLERY WEEKEND 2020.
Philipp Haager, Courtesy Janine Kuehn
Philipp Haager's (1974- ) atmospheric, mostly large-format images are produced in a lengthy process of layering countless ink glazes onto water-soaked unprimed canvases. In a stunning, finely nuanced interplay of luminescence and opacity, light-flooded pictorial spaces open up – despite the often exclusive use of black and grey tones – that display a fascinating iridescence, perhaps conveying what Haager would call a memory of nature. For all that his painting series, bearing titles such as Nebula, Near Field and Haager Deep Field, allude to the enigmatic and impenetrable, to what we as humans are not always able to readily grasp or identify, to origins and the universe, they are in fact deeply rooted in the psychological topography of a collective image memory. In addition to his large-format, rather dark and black paintings, small-formats have been increasingly emerging in recent years. Called by him as a series Bonsai, taking up the fleeting, even spontaneous of the plein air and watercolour painting besides a kind of entanglement with Asian painting traditions. In one sense they serve as sketches, like seedlings or cuttings that will grow into larger pictures or later be translated into a larger format, but at the same time they are also miniatures representing large paintings that already exist.
Studio view of Philipp Haager
In recent years, Philipp Haager attracts international attention with his large scale paintings by investigating spaces of contemplation and meditation. Philipp Haager's paintings are in the line of abstract masters, deeply routed in colourfield - as well as plein air landscape painting, creating spaces of stillness, of sacredness and meditation. He is not only opening up a dialogue with the history of art but he is also pushing the boundaries between the Western and Oriental traditional painting. As the Chinese abstract masters Zao Wouki or Chu Teh Chun had revolutionized Eastern abstract painting by fusing Western and Eastern abstract paintings, Philipp Haager explores the deep traditions of Asian arts and opens the subconscious mind to an universal interpretation.
Philipp Haager, Nahfeld Phase #15 Asian Nebula, 170 x 260 cm, Indian ink on linen, 2017
Philipp Haager studied painting at the Staatlichen Hochschule für Bildende Künste -Städelschule- in Frankfurt am Main.
Major exhibitions include Zwischenreihig at the Städelmuseum (Frankfurt am Main, 2006), Back to black – Black in current painting / Die Farbe Schwarz in der aktuellen Malerei (Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, 2008), Luftkunst - Luft als Material von Mythen und Medium der Kunst (Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, 2011), Dialog-Trialog #2 (Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen, 2013), Der Funke soll in Dir sein (curated by André Butzer) at Salon Dahlmann in Berlin 2016, Mit Verkohltem wollte ich Deinen Schatten halten curated by Jörg Mandernach (Villa Eugenia, Kunstverein Hechingen and AKKU Stuttgart, 2018), Philipp Haager (Städtische Galerie Leonberg - Galerieverein, Leonberg, 2018) and Mit Verkohltem wollte ich Deinen Schatten halten (Kunstverein Ellwangen, Schloss Ellwangen, 2019).
Selected artworks will be revealed to the public during the next highlight exhibition EQUILIBRIUM.
More about EQUILIBRIUM will be revealed over this summer...
Stay tuned!