The work of Herbert Hamak, which lies between painting and sculpture, is born of a combination of form, colour and light. Hamak works with colour in three dimensions, cutting and moulding it into simple, generally monochrome forms: cubes, parallelepipeds, columns.
The process with which he attains these forms is extremely slow and complex. It is the result of a working method bordering on artistic and scientific experiments using a skilfully prepared mixture of pigments of both natural and synthetic resin and wax. This liquid substance is moulded onto a conventional panel. The colour is thus imprisoned becoming a changeable mass, at times translucent, at others, opaque and of which the intensity varies according to the ambient lighting. If the surface of a painting usually reflects the light, by contrast light penetrates Hamak’s paintings.
For this exhibition at Xippas Galerie, the spectator is faced with works of three shapes and different colours acting as new architectural elements: a series of three uniform blocks is installed on the wall, two turquoise rectangular blocks are laid on the floor while a triangular-based column creates an angle into the exhibition space. These works harmonise with their surroundings by firstly capturing the light which envelopes them, and then radiating the light and invading the space in a game of exchanges and reciprocal influences. More than merely seeing the colour, here, one experiences it.
Herbert Hamak was born in 1952 in Unterfranken, Germany. His work is regularly exhibited in galleries all over the world: Galerie Tanit in Munich since 1990, Springer and Winckler in Berlin, Studio la Citta in Italy, Galerie Tanja Rumpff in The Netherlands, Kenji Taki in Japan and Christopher Grimes in the United States. His work was first shown at the Galerie Xippas in 1991, in the exhibition “The Painted Desert” organised by Bob Nickas. This was followed by two solo shows in 1995 and 1997. He has also been given solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt in 1993 and 1998 as well as at the Würtembergerischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart in 1996. This year he will exhibit at the Flash Art Museum in Trevi, Italy.
