Energy = matter, vice versa ad infinitum

by Hansjörg Fröhlich

At first we notice only a saturated white surface. If the light is right, we can see the texture of the canvas. But when we look at one spot for longer, the edges lose definition, our focus wanders from the material, and we see a cloudy, milky whiteness. Something wonderful happens in the airspace just above the canvas: as in a plasma, energies metabolise. If we keep looking, delicate yellow tones, mild lime green, a fragile beige, or a wisp of pink become visible. This spectrum of colours – which are not in fact present – appears through the interaction of matter and energy on the surface of Philipp Haager’s large Abstract Painting No. 1 / White.

About fifteen years ago American researchers were able to change energy into matter for the first time; in effect, they ran an atomic bomb explosion in reverse. The output of the procedure was however vanishingly small – only 200 elementary particles were produced. Nevertheless, the experiment had huge symbolic significance, as it demonstrated the original act of creation (Big Bang) on a small scale. Both transformations have a goal: in a nuclear explosion matter becomes energy, and in a Big Bang energy is absorbed and becomes matter. However, the moment of transition from one form to the other is more interesting than the end result. Haager fixes this in-between state precisely, and lets matter and the immaterial incessantly merge into one another. Coming into being and disappearing are endlessly repeated.

To produce these effects, the Stuttgart-based artist needs not only a great deal of patience but also a sure hand in steering the accidental. The groundwork for the effect described above was in fact laid by the layers of India ink Haager applied in a time-consuming process. There is no recipe for when to change from applying to drying, or for determining the interplay between opacity and transparency, or between saturation and scarcity – it is a bit like magic.

A delicate balance between intention and expression occurs when all the elements are equally present. At that point the painting is finished and can leave the alchemist’s hands. A whisper of wind blows across the surface of Haager’s paintings, but there is no breeze in the room. This is a solar wind, a mix of particles and pure light that emerges in a continuous stream from the layers of ink and sinks back into them again. The light is generations old, it is the soul of matter that has long since disappeared – and also the presentiment of future matter.

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Paramountscope shows Philipp Haager’s latest works, which both look back to the beginning of his India ink paintings and also embody the consistent further development of his artistic perception. Compared with his pictures from previous years, Haager has cut back on the thickness and layering, and has concentrated on the ink and the linen. He wants to be “basic” and is aiming with this reduction toward greater clarity and increased spontaneity of expression. This conciseness is particularly surprising for those who are familiar with the artist’s creative process, that is, his “open approach to the picture”, his sense of not being able to formally plan the content of an image but rather the need to negotiate it “in discussion” with the canvas. Targeted interventions come later, such as adding a blue gradient at the top and bottom to enable a better connection between the paintings and the room. With his new aesthetic Haager impressively masters the reworking of his vertical-format works from 2008. For example, Massiv Black was very enclosed, stern, almost pietistic, whereas the new version is open, light and communicative. For the artist, this change of essence is a sign of a newly grasped “trust in normality”. The secretive, the mediaeval and “the deeply mystic are part of me anyway”, and what interests him now are “new facets” and above all “more light”. This can be seen in the works on display, which were all produced in a fertile period in the summer of 2013, “when I could take advantage of fourteen hours of daylight”. This new lightness reaches its apogee in Abstract Painting No. 1 / White, described above. The 150 x 140 cm picture came about through overpainting a monochrome black painting – which took two years of constantly reapplying white paint. 

A prolonged period of observation allows complex issues to be explored, such as the question of the “limits and capabilities of human seeing” and the difficult interactions between seeing naturally and the formative influence of the media on our understanding of the world. “What can painting do that other media can’t, and vice versa?” How do tablets, touch screens and full HD affect how we see? How well - defined can a sensory impression be, when we know for instance that pictures from the Hubble space telescope have been collated, coloured and in effect designed? “We will never penetrate the materiality of a cosmic gas cloud”; nonetheless we see aspects of our world in these NASA pictures that would not be possible without digitisation. “This massively affects how we see ourselves,” Haager thinks – one could add, “probably even more strongly than the famous first photo of the earth from space (the Earthrise picture)”.

Nanotechnology also broadens our perspective. We peer inside ourselves, we observe procedures that we could not even theoretically imagine before, but which in spite of their complexity take place in a space much smaller than a square millimetre. The tiny size of what we can only observe through digital technology calls into question again the nature of how we see: Do we see something based on light or on animated data? Digitisation has revived the old question about light – whether it is a particle or a wave. For now, Philipp Haager has decided it is both. In his new paintings he juggles in a masterly fashion with this dualism.

(All quotations are taken from an October 2013 interview with the artist.)