DISPLAYCED – Thomas Behling and Christian Haake

MAY 28 – JUNE 17 2016

With their pictorial objects, Christian Haake and Thomas Behling construct realities from fragments of the collective mind and lead the viewer to believe that all its components are familiar. While doing so, the interplay of trivial objects, traditional motifs and technical interventions is arranged in such a convincing way, that often it becomes clear only in retrospect how deceptive appearances can be.
The works of Christian Haake deal with difference, which runs as a fine crack between the layers of reality, perception and recollected imagery. Behling’s pictorial objects target the often pathos-laden traditional imagery that can be found in bourgeois living rooms and that shape our worldview more in a subconscious than in a conscious manner and thus often contradict our self-conception.
What both artists have in common is that they investigate the meaning of what is remembered. By making the viewers their confidants, Haake and Behling let them unexpectedly get entangled in their own memories and the feedback regarding the artist’ works.

Christian Haake is a German artist living in Bremen. After studying art science and philosophy Haake decided to add a study in fine arts with Professor Yuji Takeoka. Haake received several awards and grants such as the Kunstfonds Bonn working grant and the award of the Hollweg Foundation; he also works as a guest professor for sculpture at the University of the Arts Bremen. His works were shown internationally e.g. in Riga, Seoul, Novi Sad, Vienna and Baltimore.

Thomas Behling, born in 1979 in Hanover, studied fine arts at HKS Ottersberg (1999–2001) and at the University of the Arts Bremen (2001–2006). In 2004 he started to develop his Picture-Objects and in 2006 he completed his „Meisterschüler“ degree under Professor Yuji Takeoka. Since then he exhibited internationally, for example in Venice, Basel, Riga, Gdansk, Singapore, Durban or Zagreb. Currently he lives in Berlin.