Seen but not heard.
Margarete Hahner
Kaskadeur 2002
Tausch 2002
Exhibition View
flag-detail 2009
Exhibition View
Kaskadeur 2014
Totentanz 2008
Holz
Exhibition View
the kiss 2004
LP:
Paintings range from human figures and small animals, to depictions of color systems. These images are painted sometimes on a single record or sometimes on as many as 200 records that are overlapped to form a single image.
More often the paintings are done on a series of records, one after the other, in which the image changes from one record to the next. The result is a visual metamorphosis somewhat like perceiving an optical illusion as one thing, and then suddenly seeing it as something entirely different – though in the work the transition is gradual. Hahner says, “I often think that I’m painting one image, when another emerges. I like the transformation, and I somehow want to capture it.”
To further explore the ideas of visual transformation, the painted records are also used as the equivalents of animation cells to produce short movies of ever-changing images.
„If I had my choice I would only paint on water”, says Berlin/Los Angeles- based painter Margarete Hahner, „but it is difficult to get water to stand still, unless you freeze it. And then I’d have to work in a big coat, so I paint on records instead. And records are a perfect painter’s medium because they already have a hole for hanging.
Some people might think there is a connection between my record paintings and the cinema,especially in the series paintings, where a group of records might appear to be individual frames in a movie. But I don’t think the connection is really valid because in cinema you usually have a full candy counter and a clean restroom.