Filip Haag

summits & streams

Curated by Marion Wild

Dates: 18 Sep 03 - 22 Nov 03

C3 Gallery is pleased to present the U.S. premiere of Swiss artist Filip Haag’s summits & streams, an exhibition of paintings, drawings, sculpture and video.

In all these forms, Haag’s working process incorporates the mechanism of chance, using a kind of random/organic methodology. A poetic component in Haag’s work allows for multiple and various associations to be generated from his sets of forms. The viewing eye oscillates between the abstract and the figurative possibilities.

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Haag’s paintings inhabit a zone between painting and photography. The process of creating these abstract works, which look like photographs, is surprisingly organic. With no use of the artist’s brush the photograph chemical flows directly onto photo paper provoking a series of chemical reactions. Chance continues to make the rules as the only final interventions Haag permits himself involve cutting away the irrelevant parts from these images and enlarging them. Haag states, "Chance discovers a firm and valid form more poignant and real than intention could uncover."

Haag draws with ink liquefied by methylated spirit. This produces very rapid evaporation, leaving behind unexpected products, surprising shapes. The delicate washes summon up associations whose nature might be geological or anthropomorphic. As with his photo-chemical paintings, Haag intervenes only to define the edge of a picture born of this chance infused process.

Haag presents his wax sculptures, which he has developed and made in New York, for the first time in this exhibition. In creating these he pours hot wax onto water. The state of the water, whether still of moving, determines the final shape of the wax as it solidifies into shapes of stalactites or stalagmites. Examining the forms carefully the viewer can often unpack the information as to the originating condition of the water. These objects, which stand on the floor, still wear their black, wax color, which imbues them with something of a demonical aura.

In Haag’s video Ink‘nGo he layers his drawings, kaleidoscope fashion, so that they move over each other to create new, fused shapes. These shapes suggest human beginnings, and through the video medium they begin to move and live.

Haag’s power in these various media is undeniable. A very large talent is demonstrated in Filip Haag’s summits & streams.