Haller, Florian
SURFACE TENSION
To the painting of Florian Haller
from Magdalena Kröner
The work of the 1976 born painter Florian Haller, former student in the class of Katharina Grosse in Berlin and graduated in Munich in the class of Jerry Zeniuk, stands out through its originality: Florian Haller does not adapt. He rather seems to follow his own painterly approach, which however seems to correspond quite well with the current approach of young painters internationally, dealing with abstraction: the breaking up of form, the transportation of found, ornamental and figurative fragments in new contexts. In Haller's paintings these are mosaics for instance, which he found on ceramic tiles in the former DDR. There are also traces of graffiti from his urban surroundings, organic samples, often in striking colours.
Sometimes there is a suggestion of landscape, which is disrupted again in another area of the painting by a hard, graphic element or which is nearly annihilated by the blackness that seems to flood the painting from the sides. A squiggle [krul, slinger], as if from the 1950's, curls on a carefully applied bed of stripes, but then the decorative element is fragmented through a number of neglectfully sprayed brown cords.
In regard to content, the interest of the painter in image space as a field to search and dream in, serving as an aura between reality and utopia is distinctive. Accordingly consequential is his spatial thinking: Haller prefers an orchestration of his works in coherence with architectonical settings that are in contrast with his paintings. In an ambiance with historical elements like stucco, marble or mosaics, moments of productive clash unfold. This productive clash seems to be suited to question the painting from the outside. The concern for this clash is already reflected upon at the moment the painting is being generated.
About the development of his works: the painter seems to move through his paintings like a dancer — takes something off, adds, crosses out, always fleeing for too much calculation and too much contextual closeness. In Haller's paintings, psychedelic radiation hits on gruffly placed elements. The smoothness of a perfectly painted surface encounters the incalculable one of a crudely grinded area, revealing the layer underneath. Out of disparate elements, joined together, painted over and erased, a complex semantic and painterly carpet unfolds and turns every painting into a searchlandscape, into an echo board of colours and forms of the world. The superficially perceptible neatness deceives — closely examined, more layers of meaning arise from the profundity of the painting. Florian Haller's kaleidoscopically fanned out painterly synopsis of colour, texture and structure has to do (looking from an art historical point of view) as much with free form-finding as with Op Art and Hard Edge, and is fed by sub-cultural influences like Street Art and Graffiti. For Haller himself, artists from his generation like Anton Henning and Thomas Scheibitz are important, and a painter like Adolf Hölzl is also relevant.
Florian Hallers painting creates abstract image fields that enrol themselves tangibly into the surrounding space above all through the impact of colour. In doing so the painter is mainly interested in the obvious synthetic aspect of chromaticity and composition. The physical experienced presence of the chromatic settlement and the geometrical organization of the painting, bearing directly on the beholder, is characteristic here.
Florian Haller creates complex visual weaves [structuren], that are characterized by contrasts of great iridescence and irregular layering. He expands a classical painterly behaviour through unorthodox combinations of material and ways of application, which in turn multiply the possibilities of the painting and bring new impulses. In partly opaque, partly transparent layers representational fragments are often suggested: a shadow, an outline of a person, a back, a vegetal curl, a thrown-down ornament. The world is diffused into every area and every fragment and is clod in the synopsis into a colourconcentrated master batch, fed from advertisement posters, graffiti, traffic signs and patterns of cloth. Florian Haller condenses the world into a consequently two-dimensional token, leaving everything three-dimensional behind. High Art meets Low Tech and meets a deliberately undone aesthetic, both in composition and in the making. The image-carrier underlines the experimental character of this way of painting: Haller uses second hand aluminium boards, whose worn-out marks become part of the painting.
Creating productive dissonances is what seems to interest Haller also in the configuration of chromaticity. His chromaticity seems to originate in art-distant contexts: they are the colours of advertisement and seem to be taken from posters, technical marking, Street Art, but also from functional contexts. They creep in to the Image-, colour- and form-finding of classic painting. The simultaneity of different textures, materials and structures, different ways of application, techniques and intensities generate a downright disconcerting variety inside the painting: sprayed areas stand next to scrupulously painted surfaces, lacquer next to oil and acrylic paint next to text markers.
Still, despite their complexity, the paintings of Florian Haller stay open and legible in many ways in form and content. This openness arises at the end of a long process of image finding, and the repeated painting over or painting along of paintings already concerned finished. In the process of painting, Florian Haller breaches and disrupts the closeness of the surface of the painting again and again. Many areas in the painting stay raw and open; they seem to be very much uncalculated. They appear (which is astonishing also in view of the completed painting) to get even larger during the process of painting. In the way they confront the beholder, they seem to be sampled by accident or imagined in any other way.
Looking closer, the paintings show the knowingly integration of smallest colour gradients, drips or colour sprinkles, cracking up the precision of the application of paint seen from a distance. These involuntary moments occurring in the process of painting are accepted by the artist and are not "adjusted". They remain visible as the result of the process of painting; they are neither painted over nor erased. Accidental "errors" in the layering and the interaction between different textures as oil paint and spray lacquer, occasionally resulting in a baffling craquelee (originating in the different tensions in the separate layers of paint), are left on the surface. This does not disturb the many-voiced dialogue of colours with its countless dissonants; on the contrary, these elements establish productive disturbing moments in perception. In this way the artist leaves a trace that joins the seemingly perfect surfaces to the process of painting.
And so, in the painting of Florian Haller, something antagonistic shines through: a rejection of perfection and planning. Haller's paintings are insistent but do not search for effects. They are rather borne almost casually along the way, in the process of image finding. Haller feels his way through unorthodox realms with classical painterly means and in doing so, he provokes the perception of the beholder. He refers to positions in art history, but without turning his paintings into mere effect-hashing objects or pastiches.
The abstractions of Florian Haller refuse a one-dimensional classification and claim the autonomy of the single parts as well as the autonomy of the composition as a whole. Herein, the abstraction is something that arises from the interaction; the loosely assembled individual elements and the positioning of the painterly in the experiment. The lasting fascination of this way of painting develops en passant out of the unfinished. Haller's work exposes its vulnerability in an offensive way — and in doing so, it presents itself both playfully and with self-confidence.
“The images are more important than what they tell of.”
(Jean Baudrillard)
To the painting of Florian Haller
from Magdalena Kröner
The work of the 1976 born painter Florian Haller, former student in the class of Katharina Grosse in Berlin and graduated in Munich in the class of Jerry Zeniuk, stands out through its originality: Florian Haller does not adapt. He rather seems to follow his own painterly approach, which however seems to correspond quite well with the current approach of young painters internationally, dealing with abstraction: the breaking up of form, the transportation of found, ornamental and figurative fragments in new contexts. In Haller's paintings these are mosaics for instance, which he found on ceramic tiles in the former DDR. There are also traces of graffiti from his urban surroundings, organic samples, often in striking colours.
Sometimes there is a suggestion of landscape, which is disrupted again in another area of the painting by a hard, graphic element or which is nearly annihilated by the blackness that seems to flood the painting from the sides. A squiggle [krul, slinger], as if from the 1950's, curls on a carefully applied bed of stripes, but then the decorative element is fragmented through a number of neglectfully sprayed brown cords.
In regard to content, the interest of the painter in image space as a field to search and dream in, serving as an aura between reality and utopia is distinctive. Accordingly consequential is his spatial thinking: Haller prefers an orchestration of his works in coherence with architectonical settings that are in contrast with his paintings. In an ambiance with historical elements like stucco, marble or mosaics, moments of productive clash unfold. This productive clash seems to be suited to question the painting from the outside. The concern for this clash is already reflected upon at the moment the painting is being generated.
About the development of his works: the painter seems to move through his paintings like a dancer — takes something off, adds, crosses out, always fleeing for too much calculation and too much contextual closeness. In Haller's paintings, psychedelic radiation hits on gruffly placed elements. The smoothness of a perfectly painted surface encounters the incalculable one of a crudely grinded area, revealing the layer underneath. Out of disparate elements, joined together, painted over and erased, a complex semantic and painterly carpet unfolds and turns every painting into a searchlandscape, into an echo board of colours and forms of the world. The superficially perceptible neatness deceives — closely examined, more layers of meaning arise from the profundity of the painting. Florian Haller's kaleidoscopically fanned out painterly synopsis of colour, texture and structure has to do (looking from an art historical point of view) as much with free form-finding as with Op Art and Hard Edge, and is fed by sub-cultural influences like Street Art and Graffiti. For Haller himself, artists from his generation like Anton Henning and Thomas Scheibitz are important, and a painter like Adolf Hölzl is also relevant.
Florian Hallers painting creates abstract image fields that enrol themselves tangibly into the surrounding space above all through the impact of colour. In doing so the painter is mainly interested in the obvious synthetic aspect of chromaticity and composition. The physical experienced presence of the chromatic settlement and the geometrical organization of the painting, bearing directly on the beholder, is characteristic here.
Florian Haller creates complex visual weaves [structuren], that are characterized by contrasts of great iridescence and irregular layering. He expands a classical painterly behaviour through unorthodox combinations of material and ways of application, which in turn multiply the possibilities of the painting and bring new impulses. In partly opaque, partly transparent layers representational fragments are often suggested: a shadow, an outline of a person, a back, a vegetal curl, a thrown-down ornament. The world is diffused into every area and every fragment and is clod in the synopsis into a colourconcentrated master batch, fed from advertisement posters, graffiti, traffic signs and patterns of cloth. Florian Haller condenses the world into a consequently two-dimensional token, leaving everything three-dimensional behind. High Art meets Low Tech and meets a deliberately undone aesthetic, both in composition and in the making. The image-carrier underlines the experimental character of this way of painting: Haller uses second hand aluminium boards, whose worn-out marks become part of the painting.
Creating productive dissonances is what seems to interest Haller also in the configuration of chromaticity. His chromaticity seems to originate in art-distant contexts: they are the colours of advertisement and seem to be taken from posters, technical marking, Street Art, but also from functional contexts. They creep in to the Image-, colour- and form-finding of classic painting. The simultaneity of different textures, materials and structures, different ways of application, techniques and intensities generate a downright disconcerting variety inside the painting: sprayed areas stand next to scrupulously painted surfaces, lacquer next to oil and acrylic paint next to text markers.
Still, despite their complexity, the paintings of Florian Haller stay open and legible in many ways in form and content. This openness arises at the end of a long process of image finding, and the repeated painting over or painting along of paintings already concerned finished. In the process of painting, Florian Haller breaches and disrupts the closeness of the surface of the painting again and again. Many areas in the painting stay raw and open; they seem to be very much uncalculated. They appear (which is astonishing also in view of the completed painting) to get even larger during the process of painting. In the way they confront the beholder, they seem to be sampled by accident or imagined in any other way.
Looking closer, the paintings show the knowingly integration of smallest colour gradients, drips or colour sprinkles, cracking up the precision of the application of paint seen from a distance. These involuntary moments occurring in the process of painting are accepted by the artist and are not "adjusted". They remain visible as the result of the process of painting; they are neither painted over nor erased. Accidental "errors" in the layering and the interaction between different textures as oil paint and spray lacquer, occasionally resulting in a baffling craquelee (originating in the different tensions in the separate layers of paint), are left on the surface. This does not disturb the many-voiced dialogue of colours with its countless dissonants; on the contrary, these elements establish productive disturbing moments in perception. In this way the artist leaves a trace that joins the seemingly perfect surfaces to the process of painting.
And so, in the painting of Florian Haller, something antagonistic shines through: a rejection of perfection and planning. Haller's paintings are insistent but do not search for effects. They are rather borne almost casually along the way, in the process of image finding. Haller feels his way through unorthodox realms with classical painterly means and in doing so, he provokes the perception of the beholder. He refers to positions in art history, but without turning his paintings into mere effect-hashing objects or pastiches.
The abstractions of Florian Haller refuse a one-dimensional classification and claim the autonomy of the single parts as well as the autonomy of the composition as a whole. Herein, the abstraction is something that arises from the interaction; the loosely assembled individual elements and the positioning of the painterly in the experiment. The lasting fascination of this way of painting develops en passant out of the unfinished. Haller's work exposes its vulnerability in an offensive way — and in doing so, it presents itself both playfully and with self-confidence.
“The images are more important than what they tell of.”
(Jean Baudrillard)