PRESENTATION: Jutta Haeckel-Skin in the Game

In her works, the artist Jutta Haeckel  from Düsseldorf occupies herself with the principles of cycles of growth. Her pictures call to mind depictions of nature as well as reflections or the courses of rivers, but without spatial points of orientation. At the same time, the paste-like application of paint makes her abstract works seem to be “broken open”. Traces of the painting process such as drops, splatters, or spots become visible and give rise to new patterns of perception.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hosfelt Gallery Archive

Jutta Haeckel has accomplished a rare feat in the crowded arena of contemporary art — she has developed a style of painting that is unique. In her exhibition “Skin in the Game” she uses her technical breakthrough to express the uncertainty of our time. Jutta Haeckel paints on jute, the strong, coarse, natural fiber that burlap is made of, and utilizes a series of unorthodox techniques to undermine and expand traditional notions of painting. Most notably, she applies pigments to the “backside” of the painting, then pushes it through small gaps she’s created in the fabric – extruding the paint onto the “front” and subverting the two-dimensional space of traditional painting. These are paintings unlike anything anyone has ever made. Her newest work aggressively emphasizes the concept of the canvas as a permeable membrane, or skin. Viscous material is forced back and forth across a porous barrier. The woven substrate is so powerfully abraded that at moments it seems about to unravel. Some of these paintings appear to have too little canvas to support the weight of the paint they support. Haeckel’s process is risky. Every move she makes in the studio has the potential of either dynamic creation or complete destruction. That precariousness is what drives her art. Her subversive artworks invert the act and purpose of painting—both materially and subjectively.  Beginning with jute as her substrate—much thicker and rougher than standard canvas—she frays it by removing some of the threads. This opens the weave and allows her to extrude paint from the back, thus physically merging paint, image and surface.  In addition, through her process of accumulating material and form, she disguises the representational sources of her subjects. In confounding the viewers’ experience she creates an opportunity for reinvention. Constantly exploding conventions, Haeckel’s paintings simultaneously disclose and deceive, their multilayered colors and swirling or grid-like designs revealing whispers of lost meaning. She draws content from visual markers intended to inform, instruct, or identify. Yet the maps, fingerprints, and circuit boards she depicts transform into abstracted patterns and their purpose evaporates.  Haeckel studied with Karin Kneffel and Katharina Grosse and credits their vastly different approaches to painting with her own fascination with the medium’s possibilities.  She notes: “I don’t believe that everything is already accomplished, I think evolution is always possible. It starts with just a little variation and suddenly it could become something new or unique.  This is why I always force myself to search for the boundaries of painting and the boundaries of the materials I am working with.” There is a deep urgency to Haeckel’s paintings, a sense that the borders and boundaries she’s pushing against might give way at any moment.  As she extends and expands the construction and content of painting, she calls into question the nature of art itself and dares to reimagine what is possible—in art as well as life.

Photo: Jutta Haeckel, Skin in the Game, 2024, acrylic on jute (8 panels), 78 3/4 x 126 in, 200 x 320 cm, © Jutta Haeckel, Courtesy the artist and Hosfelt Gallery

Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, Duration: 1/2 -15/3/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, https://hosfeltgallery.com/