Star 2013

Eckart Hahn, born in 1971, painted "Star" with oil on canvas, and what grabs me is the way he toys with our perception. It's a real process of seeing, unseeing, and then seeing again. The first thing that hits you is that high gloss finish, everything shimmers with light, like a hyper-real dream. The black plastic bag that hangs down from the birdhouse, its surface reflecting everything around it, is rendered with such precision it’s almost absurd. The bird is perched so perfectly it is uncanny. Then there are these strange yellow balls, dangling like odd fruit. The colours, with their high-key sheen, play tricks on the eye. And Hahn really nails how things reflect light, but the reflections are strange. I like to think of artists like Magritte, or even de Chirico, who messed with reality in a similar way. Hahn sets up a kind of visual puzzle, inviting you to piece it together, even though the answer remains elusive.