Yi Ying 2019

Eckart Hahn made 'Yi Ying', and it seems the process of making it was just as important as the finished thing. Look at how Hahn builds these bird forms with layers, like collage but all painted. It’s not about hiding the process, it's about revealing it, front and center. The colors are bold, almost clashing, yet somehow they work. You can almost feel the artist puzzling it out, changing his mind. There's this one bird, towards the top, with the electric blue wings edged with red; it feels like a burst of energy. It reminds me of those little shifts in paintings by Francis Picabia. Hahn, like Picabia, isn't afraid to let the painting be a record of its own making. It’s a conversation, a back-and-forth between the artist and the canvas. And it’s in that space of ambiguity, that space of questioning, that the real magic happens.