5 May - 22 June 2024
Jens Hanke, Diving Slowly Into My Mind
Wake Me If Anything Happens (2011), collage on primed paper, 200 x 225 cm
Diving Slowly Into My Mind is the title Jens Hanke chose for his first exhibition in Brussels, featuring collages and drawings from two distinct series of works: the smaller drawings are from Sonderschaft, while the collages are from A Twisted Mind Was Left Alone.
We are drawn into fictional spaces and confronted with supernatural characters, which are by no means representing existing landscapes or persons, but which rather depict psychological processes of cognition and perception. Hanke’s work results from an overwhelming fantasy: he manages to create altogether a new reality which is, to some extent, inspired by science fiction, literature (a.o. by Stanislaw Lem) or Andrei Tarkovsky's feature film Stalker.
Left to right:
Box for an Open Mind (2011), collage on colour-primed paper, 42 x 59 cm
There Are Some Parts Missing, Did You Drop Something on Your Way Back? (2024), collage on colour-primed paper, 42 x 59 cm
Dings Dängs Goes Thinking (2024), collage on colour-primed paper, 42 x 59 cm
Box for an Open Mind (2011), collage on colour-primed paper, 42 x 59 cm
There Are Some Parts Missing, Did You Drop Something on Your Way Back? (2024), collage on colour-primed paper, 42 x 59 cm
Dings Dängs Goes Thinking (2024), collage on colour-primed paper, 42 x 59 cm
Hanke's colourful collages are built using mostly strict geometrical shapes, alignments and patterns. Some of them seem to generate layered architectural spaces, but the work entitled Wake Me If Something Happens clearly stands out by its pure circular forms displayed around a rather distant and invisible centre toward which one's eyes are drawn, almost as in a journey to the centre or the inner self.
Left to right:
No One to Blame (2014), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
It Seems to Have Overlooked One Important Fact (2021), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
It will Never Get Closed Again (2014), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
No One to Blame (2014), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
It Seems to Have Overlooked One Important Fact (2021), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
It will Never Get Closed Again (2014), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
The playful drawings of the series Sonderschaft offer a stark contrast: the almost abstract constellations and rounded, mask-like, figures seem to be lost in space and time. One feels reminded of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice): “Good! The sorcerer, my old master left me here alone today! Now his spirits, for a change, my own wishes shall obey!”
Left to right:
Hang On For The Ride (2023), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
Together Forever (2023), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
Time Goes By (2023), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
Hang On For The Ride (2023), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
Together Forever (2023), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
Time Goes By (2023), charcoal on colour-primed paper, 38,5 x 28,5 cm
Jens Hanke‘s paintings and drawings are the product of a confrontation with the unreal. Despite their appearance, Hanke's objects are of neither urban nor technical nature; they are rather the expression of a dream or of an escape into a surrealistic, idealistic, dreamland, the elements of which the beholder is required to discover by themselves.
Jens Hanke was born in Eilenburg (Germany) in 1966. He studied at the Leipzig Academy of Fine Arts (HGB). In 1994, a DAAD scholarship allowed him to go to Chicago, USA, where he spent 6 years. He has been living and working in Berlin since 2000. Hanke’s work has many associative meanings. He is concerned with the phenomenon of perception as a psychological process. He uses elements of modernism and surrealism and weaves them into a visual network of different pictorial worlds. His multi-layered work includes drawings, books, collages, paintings and large wall installations. His works have been shown in many solo exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland and the USA, and are to be found in numerous private and public collections.