Herbert Hamak–Haus Lange
Opening: Sunday, 7 February, 2010, 11.30 a.m., Museum Haus Lange
Herbert Hamak (*1952 Lower Franconia, Germany, lives and works in Hammelburg) has developed a new suite of works specially for Museum Haus Lange which act as interventions that highlight and transcend various aspects of the building's design. Walls, corners or nooks are given a coloured marker and a physical extension and the customary, sober experience of space inside the villa is given an emotional charge by the coloured volumes.
“I am concerned with colour as sheer mass”, confesses artist Herbert Hamak. Hamak works according to a specific method: he stirs pigments into a mixture of synthetic resin and wax and then casts the mixture in a form constructed from specially coated plywood. But before the mass hardens and resists any more change, the picture substrate - a normal length of canvas on a stretcher - is inserted into the mass. The visual outcome is not totally predictable, because initially the overall work remains hidden to the artist. In addition Hamak produces pieces that are either more opaque or more diaphanous by introducing the different ingredients; the transitions are fluid. The choice of pigments for instance does not follow any set pattern but remains totally subjective, even though Hamak thinks highly of the colour model, for instance, developed by Philip Otto Runge in the 19th century.
Hamak's works may be regarded as a further development of those fusions of space and colour that were above all inspired by Mark Rothko's canvases. His works also operate on a level that is marked by the transition from picture to object, as is also to be observed in the paintings of Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly.
A German/English catalogue will appear during the exhibition.