We are delighted to announce the second solo exhibition of the German artist Eckart Hahn in our Vienna gallery. Under the title Membrane, he is showing paintings, sculptures and wall installations that deal with our perception in an increasingly diffuse, multi-layered world.

Eckart Hahn's paintings are often categorized as “hyperrealism”. This may apply to his highly precise painting technique, which reminds us of the virtues of the old masters and seems to strive for a faithful, almost photographic depiction of reality. For his motifs, however, this classification is incorrect.

Nothing Hahn paints is real. Rather, he leads us into a fantasy world in which the absurd and bizarre has taken over without restraint. Although things have obviously emerged from the real world, they elude it with chutzpah, verve and charming renitence.

Time and again, Hahn addresses pressing contemporary issues such as environmental destruction, species extinction, social Darwinism, abuse of power and loss of reality.

His new exhibition at Crone Vienna now exclusively features works whose motifs are composed of paper. Sometimes it is shredded, sometimes folded. Sometimes it forms an origami, sometimes a puzzle. The exhibition title Membrane reveals the intention behind it: Hahn wants to show us what can happen in a world in which paper - especially printed paper - is used less and less. The interface between external, material reality and internal, mental processing is becoming more fragile, more porous, more dysfunctional. Grasping the world in all its facets turns out to be more difficult or even impossible.

Paper as a transponder that includes the sensual, haptic and truthful - in Hahn's view, it is already sorely missed.

Eckart Hahn was born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1971 and lives in Reutlingen in Baden Württemberg. He studied photography, art history and graphic design in Stuttgart before devoting himself entirely to painting. His works can be found in numerous important international museums and private collections. Villa Zanders in Bergisch Gladbach is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective to him in summer 2025.