HANNS KUNITZBERGER

In the exhibition HANNS KUNITZBERGER: Likeness 2002–2005 , the Hamburger Kunsthalle presents expansive, multi-part works by the Austrian painter Hanns Kunitzberger (b. 1955). These works on canvas are produced in a lengthy process involving multiple overpaintings, resulting in various layers that can be glimpsed below the superimposed areas of colour. This technique lends the images a translucency that can be likened metaphorically to time shimmering through to the surface. With their very own language of colour and serial monumentality, Kunitzberger’s large-scale paintings transform the space around them. Their presentation in the domed hall of the Hamburger Kunsthalle summons memories of the great history of this setting as an exhibition venue while echoing similar experiences of paintings in space at other venues such as the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.

The time spent contemplating Kunitzberger’s paintings corresponds in condensed form to the time the painter spends making them. But this paradigm, which of course applies to every painting in the world, takes on a deeper meaning here: Just as the brush applied paint to the picture, so does the viewer’s gaze scan the image in search of the traces and layers it left behind on the canvas. The works thus hold the beholder in their thrall, although they are by no means narrative. Kunitzberger considers it his task to initiate a dialogue between the artwork and the people viewing it, with the artist’s personality a secondary consideration that remains hidden. 

Hanns Kunitzberger works and lives in Berlin.