We are very pleased to show Pierre Haubensak's (*1935 Brünig CH) fifth solo exhibition in the gallery. The exhibition reflects his magnificent retrospective show at Fotostudio Frei, an annex of the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, this summer. The presentation was accompanied by a publication including selected works from 1961 to 2025 of this important artist with a concise text by Dieter Schwarz. The exhibition coincided with Pierre Haubensak’s 90th birthday.
While Pierre Haubensak presented paintings and drawings from many groups of works in the spacious rooms of the Fotostudio Frei, a building by Herzog & de Meuron from 1981, in the gallery on the other hand, he focuses on two creative phases: from his late work after 2020, he shows a total of nine pictures, six paintings on card board and three works on canvas; from the Tetras group, which was mainly created in the 1990s, he shows two large oil paintings in portrait format. These two pictures dominate the impression in the second exhibition room. They are hung opposite each other and bracket the spatial structure. In most of the paintings from the Tetras group, Haubensak chose to paint the diagonally placed colour fields in either light or dark tones. This criss-cross arrangement of light and dark colours gives the paintings the sensation of dynamic movement.
In his late works, Haubensak exploits the possibilities of painting to the full, as always. An important criterion of this group of works is that the painter completely renounced of the use of a brush, instead using only an approximately 50-centimetres-wide metal spatula as his working tool. Depending on the pressure applied, Haubensak allows different amounts of paint to reach the picture surface between the palette knife and the picture carrier but never applies the paint too thickly. This physical work demands a great deal from the artist, not least because the process has to be done quickly, as acrylic paint dries rapidly. The chosen technique leaves little room for spontaneous improvisation: Haubensak must make groundbreaking decisions about the composition of the picture before he starts working. It is important to determine the contrast of the colours in advance. The artist distributes the paint ‘alla prima’, in one stroke, capturing configurations that oscillate between abstraction and figuration. The image carriers, canvas or handmade paper, bring their own unique qualities as colour carriers. These claire-obscure images require the audience to interpret them. Recognising and recognisable vision are demanded. In this group of works, created since 2016, Pierre Haubensak unfolds a masterful late work that possesses an astonishing lightness and serene self-evidence.