“The task of art today is to bring chaos into order,” philosopher Adorno proclaimed in 1951. At first (and also at second) glance, Christoph Hänsli seems to be following this dictum less and less as his age progresses and his body of work grows. For the “ordering” (of things), along with the “preservation” (of things), and their immanent failure, are the Hänslian leitmotif, spanning his entire oeuvre. These “things” now also populate the artist’s fourth exhibition in our gallery – in the form of two very different, almost contrasting groups of works. Two German institutions served as the starting point for the creation of just over 30 paintings in the past 3 years: the Kunsthalle in Bielefeld and the Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben. Both institutions serve Hänsli’s dual interest of preservation/order, albeit in very different ways.

In the case of the Kunsthalle, “preservation” refers not to the core museum task of collection management, but to the imminent disappearance of elements of the technical system that will fall victim to the renovation of the building designed by Philip Johnson half a century ago. Control panels, levers, warning lights and measurement indicators – the aesthetics of the economic miracle years are characterized by round shapes and are, of course, hopelessly “passé” in the digital age. They are the visible traits of a technology hidden behind cover panels that serves man to control and dominate his environment, to optimize and subjugate it. These devices have been regulars in the permanent troupe of Hänsli’s oeuvre since 2011, culminating in Der Generator in 2015. The artist’s almost considerate interest in ventilation grilles and inspection flaps – whose reduction he continues to push in the Bielefeld group of works – goes back even further. The fact that Hänsli brilliantly masters the trompe l’oeil effect (which he does not seek) in terms of craftsmanship is overshadowed by the radical nature of his choice of motif. In contrast to the switches and levers, which involuntarily stimulate motor activity in the viewer, the want-to-touch reflex, these painted, “void” surfaces, despite the omnipresent promise of a “behind it,” have the opposite effect. One does not approach them, nor does one feel any impulse to open them, but almost looks through them, or into a dense fog. It is as if one does not succeed in bringing one’s eyes into focus. Hänsli describes this moment as “experiencing presence sensuously.” Faced with the geometric forms and monochrome surfaces of these paintings, one can’t but think of the milestones of abstraction and conceptual art. However, while Malevich sought to prove the superiority of “pure feeling over the representation of the visible world,” Hänsli, with his precise and at the same time reduced representationalism, is concerned with a depiction of reality, both seen and felt – without exaggeration, without dramatization, and without assigning a symbolic function to things. He penetrates into the “no man’s land between man and object” (to quote Adorno once again), in which the everydayness appears strange to us and a supposedly familiar and controlled order is suddenly called into question. Having reached this point – with his confidence in everyday technology tarnished – the viewer gratefully reaches for a painterly life ring that Hänsli throws to him: on the monochrome gray-beige tin flap, which can only be recognized as such at through discrete contour shadows, we discover the traces left behind by dirty hands opening and closing it (Abdeckung Zuluft [Supply Air Cover]). Now we feel the urge to step closer to the painting, just to realize with relief that it is indeed the flap that has been sullied – and not the work of art itself.