THOMAS HUBER. Rauten Traurig/La langueur des Losanges/Sad facets

THOMAS HUBER (1955-)

Swiss painter Thomas Huber provides us with locations that require us to think about their artistic fiction. Like an architect, he interweaves the picture space with design structures and by allowing motifs, such as diamonds and squares, to become a determining element of the work, he offers us an ironic reflection on the modernist myth.

“My pictures show spaces. You can see them but you can’t get to them; it is as if they are sealed behind clear glass. The picture is a promise that cannot be honoured, it is a wistful, sad thing. If I had the opportunity to enter the pictures, how would I find my bearings? I draw diagonal lines in the broad spatial flight. I find the centre at the point where these lines cross over. I add another diagonal and then another and check the depth of the picture. Eventually, an entire network of diagonals covers the spaces and I can identify a pattern of diamond shapes. The wall surfaces, shortened due to perspective, also resemble diamonds. Everything comes to a head below the surface; I see the pictures as sad diamonds.” (Thomas Huber, 2008)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Thomas Huber: Rauten Traurig / Sad Facets at MARTa Herford, August – October 2008; at Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes, October 2008 – January 2009; and at Kunsthalle Tübingen, January – April 2009.

Biography
1955 Born in Zurich
1977-1978 Kunstgewerbeschule Basel
1979 Royal College of Art London
1980-1983 Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Fritz Schwegler’s class
1991-1999 Professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Braunschweig
1992 Temporary Director of the Centraal Museum Utrecht
2000-2002 Chairman of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (Association of German Artists)
2001 Künstlermuseum: Reinstallation of the collection with Bogomir Ecker in the museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf
Lives and works in Berlin since 2008