Jongleur 2016

Eckart Hahn’s ‘Jongleur’ shows us a precarious balance of animals painted against a black background with a yellow floor. I can imagine Hahn in his studio, carefully considering the textures, surfaces, and their relationships. The painting gives off a hyper-realness while pushing at the edges of surrealism. The almost photographic quality contrasts with the oddity of the animal balancing act. I wonder what Hahn might have been thinking about as he made this? The lion, monkey, and gazelle look as though they’re from different paintings, carefully cut out and pasted into a new arrangement. What happens when we find ourselves in a situation where the sum of its parts can be greater than the whole? Hahn is an artist in conversation with other artists, past and present, sharing their work as points of departure, inspiring new forms of seeing and experiencing the world. The painting embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations, not a single definitive reading.