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until 03.07. | #2999ARTatBerlin | Köppe Contemporary presents from 30th March 2021 the solo show “Archipel” with paintings by the artist Simone Haack. In the context of the exhibition, Simone Haack faced the questions of THE INTERVIEW IN|DEEDS.
Reality, dream, ideas and utopias beyond the limits of the possible are dialectically related to each other in Haack’s art. This, together with her delight in the sensual materiality of painterly details, forms the basis for the equally fascinating and disturbingly emotional effect of her œuvre.
“I paint fictional, suggestive portraits. I have always had the vision of a pictorial language that works with the means of realism, but nevertheless does not depict reality but forms a kind of parallel track to it,” Simone Haack described her pictorial concept in an interview. Simone Haack’s pictorial constructions contain paradoxes, metamorphoses and transformations.
And costuming, masking, veiling or playing into the absurd are also recurring elements in her paintings.
Simone Haack, Liebesperlen, 2021, 120 x 140 cm, oil on cotton, photo: Lea Gryze
In many of the Berlin-based artist’s interiors, the suggestive staging through lighting effects with harsh light and strong drop shadows is virtually picture-determining. The over-realistic, dramatic lighting expresses a reference to cinema (e.g. film noir, the psychological thriller or the horror film).
In many of the artist’s paintings, the characters – mostly children and young women in often domestic surroundings – are lit up as if by a flashlight. Something has happened or seems imminent. Unmistakably, looks and gestures convey the reliving of upsetting experiences.
However, the unexpected and incomprehensible that has broken into the sphere of the private or intimate eludes any personification. It remains hidden because the artist abruptly breaks off the narrative structure of the picture – like a film tear. In what her figures experience, experiences become tangible – of power and dominance, powerlessness, rigid constraints or exclusion. Haack’s pictures speak of the fragility of our existence, of vulnerability and isolation.
Simone Haack, Pink Waters, 2019, 90 x 120 cm, oil on cotton, photo: Lea Gryze
The artist juxtaposes such often existential situations in everyday life with fantastic sceneries in which the settings are shifted to dream states or to worlds beyond the limits of the possible. Motifs of floating or flying, the lifting of the body’s weight or looking down on the world from above as well as dreaming oneself into another, better world – into a future in which man experiences primordial experiences in harmony with nature – these are all metaphors that appear again and again in the artist’s paintings and drawings.
André Lindhorst, 2021
Vernissage: Saturday, 27 March 2021 // 15:00 – 22:00 + Sunday, 28 March 2021 // 12:00 – 18:00
For the organisation of the opening: More detailed information on admission under the currently valid Corona measures: www.villa-koeppe.de (registration required)
Exhibition dates: Tuesday, 30 March – Saturday, 22 May 2021 – ATTENTION: extended until Saturday, 3rd July 2021
To the gallery
Image caption cover: Simone Haack, Cherry Blossom Girl – 2018, 90 x 165 cm, oil on cotton, photo: Lea Gryze
Exhibition Simone Haack – Köppe Contemporary | Zeitgenössische Kunst | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
