Les fleurs 2019

Eckart Hahn made "Les Fleurs" using a smooth, glossy paint, and the image feels as though it has grown, almost organically. The painting has this incredible yellow ground, but you can also see the history in the drips, the stains – the sheer mess of painting! I imagine Hahn working on this, starting with the birds and the central circular still life – the bright explosion of color and contrast – and then letting the ground emerge around them, staining and flooding the surface to create this total hallucinatory scene. The birds themselves have this haunting feeling. Are they dead or alive? Are they emerging from the canvas or disintegrating back into it? I think about other painters like Titian, who also used layers of glazing, and this incredible sense of light to convey the feeling of movement and change. Ultimately, painting is a conversation with the past, a way of transforming and reimagining what’s come before, and I think Hahn does this in a way that feels totally wild and new.