Henrik Eiben 

"Pink is where the ♥ is"

September 8th - October 16th, 2010

Opening reception on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010, 7 pm

Opening times: Tue - Fri 10 am - 6 pm + Sat 11 am - 3 pm

It´s the beginning of May 2010. Henrik is heading off for his residency in Sao Paulo. Fortunately someone put skype on his computer before so we will be able to call and even see each other. Sad enough that we won´t meet personally for months because I can´t find the time for a little trip to Brasil. But this is not only sad, I also get the feeling of missing an important and unbelievable opportunity. Henrik frequently visits us in the gallery where we usually have a coffee or some beers and chat about current tendencies in contemporary art as well as the programme and aims of the gallery. And I try to visit Henrik in his studio as often as I can – which is way too seldom. But still this place became a location of contemplative retirement to me where I love to stay and see things developing. Luckily this place is located quite nearby the gallery in the Rothenburgsort district, one of Hamburgs next best places to be. We listen to music from Herbie Hancock to Foo Fighters, have a glass of tea and talk about Henrik´s work then. His studio consits of three beautiful rooms, a huge one for big works and for presentation purposes, a smaller one for drawings as well as a mid-sized one for storage and rough works like sawing and sanding. And of course an uncared-for kitchen as well a lavatory with several good books. Ain´t it interesting that places determine subjects of conversation? You obviously need a certain surrounding to be able to think about certain things. Lucky those who don´t need that. Vision is scary.

Back to Brasil: Henrik lives in a splashy apartment with studio. It is really bright, that much I can see. And the best thing is that it just fits. I ask myself if a residency in Brasil will be able to even push and sensibilize Henrik´s works, for he already thinks about questions of material and genres in an enoumously liberated and sensible way and does his works accordingly. And if he will be able to strenghten the certainty it needs and carry the idea of brasilian „vida louca“-spirit back home and into his work. Definetely he can. Because we´re talking about Henrik, the artist who has the guts to contrast the partial cacophony in contemporary art with his extremely decelerated work flow. With which he gains a call for contemplation and intensity from within this overcharged entanglement. So he challenges the recipient to in-depth examination – in case he or she is willing to engage with this. Already Germano Celant, great cuator, writer and thinker first of all concerning Arte Povera, targets on the dimension of time when he claims „the dimension of life as a period without due-date“.
And so Henrik, born in Tokyo in 1975, who started his education at AKI Enschede / the Netherlands, went over to the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore / USA then and ended as a master student in the class of Silvia Bächli at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe / Germany has arrived at a place that seems to match perfectly. Pretty vibrant and lively but never competing with time. We have the timepieces and he has the time you may think. Still in arts this only runs with those works that broadcast the magic they were done with. Not always with those that are generated in factory-like processes. And definetely not via intermediation of a didactic syntax that chums up with morally and / or political declaration. In what he does Henrik neither accepts the end of utopia concerning the ultimate power of arts nor the fact that beholders of his works have no demands to what he does and to life. „Eibens works prove emphatically that the wish to take artworks, perfectly composed with absolutenesss and done with full potential concerning aesthetic impact as a basis, needs to search interaction with the subjective range of experience of the observers to be able to unfold completely“, like Benjamin Fellmann mentions in „Talking Aesthetics. Form and content in the works of Henrik Eiben“. So let´s better take a closer look at that and into ourselves.

In a long-lasting, perpetually reflecting process from all possible perspectives Henrik builds sculptures made of colour, drawings with metal or made of strands within the space, generated coloured glows on the wall and he paints with cloths. A crucial point of his artistic approach aims to the deconstruction of clear divisions between genres, clichés and stereotypes. This stongly functions via materiality and by challenging himself and the beholder to think about more comprehensive categories than genres - for example about contemplation, the sublime, beauty and relevance. Henrik Eiben reflects about iconographies of Minimal Art, Black Painting, Colourfield Painting, Radical Painting, fabrics and colours of all kinds and, since Brasil, also of clay and glass. On the one hand he does this in an iconographic way and on the other hand he does it at least as much in an emotional way that has its origin in visual and psychic impressions. Each material, each cloth has its own special aura and history, everything recalls highly individual memories, detached from any commitment concerning figurativeness or narration, but towards a certain emancipation of conventional forms, for example canvas. Henrik consequently dares the step into space more and more and peels away from any conventional shape. Nevertheless narrative aspects aren´t excluded at all, though they develop more by thinking outside the box.
During Henriks stay in Sao Paulo he generates some great pieces for the show here, like „beijos“, made out of clay as well as drawings with wooden sticks for iced-lollies. Also he discovered a fantastic young painter at Fortes Vilaça Gallery whom he changed a piece with - we will do a show with her next year. During this time we keep on doing shows and wander for the arts. While Art Basel takes place Birte and I see the mind-blowing Jean-Michel Basquiat-Exhibition at Fondation Beyeler. When Henrik is back at last he views the beautiful catalogue and is totally fascinated by an installation view at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles from the early Eighties - he can´t take his eyes off the wooden structure of the ceiling. From this impact the piece „Larry´s ceiling“ occured and it will be shown in the exhibition here, too. At the end of July I start my longed for holidays: A roadtrip with my best friend leads us to several important european churches like the ones in Magdeburg, Quedlinburg, Gernrode, Naumburg, Vienna, Venice, Cappella degli Scrovegni / Padua, San Vitale / Ravenna and, amongst others, Milano, but also to Bauhaus in Dessau, to the „ Reichsparteitagsgelände“ in Nuremberg, Arena di Verona, the coastside, Lago di Como as well as Maggiore and via San Bernhardino, definetely one of the most stunning routes in Europe, back to Berlin where I see the Biennal and, a bit uninspired, Olafur Eliasson at Martin-Gropius-Bau. Then back to beloved Hamburg. Before I left Henrik borrows me a book, even though I have more than enough with me. This one I read in Vienna: „On brevity of time“ by Seneca. Now I understand a little bit more how one can be solid as a rock like Henrik Eiben.                                                                                                  

Diane Kruse