Black Works 2005 - 2009

Working almost exclusively in black and grey tones, Philipp Haager developed a body of paintings whose sense of depth emerges through the accumulation of numerous translucent layers. Beneath their dark surfaces, complex fields of light unfold, evoking atmospheres, memories and inner states of experience rather than depicting nature itself.

These paintings mark the beginning of a long-term investigation into translating the fleeting and spontaneous language of ink and watercolour into the scale and presence of the upright, large-format painting. What had previously taken place on horizontal sheets of paper was now shifted onto vertically stretched, water-saturated canvases. The fluid logic of Indian ink, watercolour and Art Informel entered the upright pictorial space, where gravity became a visible and not entirely controllable component of the painting process.

Using only black Indian ink on raw, unprimed canvas, the works direct attention to the very essence of painting itself: light, vision and perception. Their increasing darkening cannot be understood as a purely formal decision, but rather as an expression of concentration and immersion in an age when the growing flood of fast-moving digital and media imagery increasingly shaped and began to dominate visual experience.

The Black Works mark a decisive turning point within Haager's oeuvre. In their radical reduction to black, the central concerns of his later painting first come into focus: atmosphere, space and image-making. The series marks both an ending and a beginning.