For years Filip Haag has explored ways in which works can virtually create themselves (photochemical processes, ink painting, wax-to-bronze sculptures). And he has, conversely, not so much celebrated the long and very slow growth of forms from short strokes into imagined worlds, as sat out with pencil.
Since 2020, a change has been taking place: towards processes of personal expression. And he has been painting for a year – another step in the change – with his fingers. Finger painting increases the closeness of the author to the work and the intensity of expression – no reservoir of color ensures a long and serene stroke. Painting with fingers charges the paintings – as well as the artist himself. “Painting with fingers, I bring myself in and can disappear at the same time. Disappear in the work. I like that!”

Filip Haag is entering new territory. But at the same time he is back to his roots. He approaches the figure again, faces (but which cannot be grasped, only guessed at, which are not “portrait”, not “likeness”, not human, not animal. The beings have two faces – and at the same time none. Like Janus, who looks in two directions and does not unite the opposites, but connects them. Who opens himself in every direction). Where form is vague, it sets ideas in motion.
Haag’s images are created only in hunches, never under the influence of tangible specifications. For this reason, and through the use of gold-colored metallic pigment, they are inscribed with a strange shimmer that further eludes their tangibility.

Filip Haag is not concerned with ability. Recognition, however, is. Before tackling large formats, he turns to a stack of rather small papers with brushes and fingers. Intuitively and without content-related intentions, he applies gouache or (new) acrylic paint, over days, weeks, months, always anew, until the moment comes when everything that has happened so far fits and has become work. In a committed (and physically exhausting) act, he then sets to work with acrylic or with oil on the picture stretched out on the floor in front of him. Even the priming (usually in black and still with brushes) is a search for shape. With each color the picture transforms. He hangs it on the wall as soon as there is no longer much paint flowing and dripping. Now the picture can provide the necessary distance for a (critical) distance. In the best case, the finished picture is done. In all other cases, it comes back to it in a new attempt. Filip Haag works on many pictures in parallel; unfinished they stand stacked, until it goes on in a new attempt – with intention without intention.

Pictures grow sometimes infinitely slowly (like the crystal) and vice versa sometimes from the bang. Sometimes in a nagging, sometimes in a frenzy. As the exhibition title says. Works can succeed in seconds, others resist for years. “In brevity lies the spice and in (out)duration lies the power.” (Filip Haag)
At the same time, however, the throw-and-resist turn also maps the opposites to which we are subject in our present: “Will versus weapon, wish versus reality, web versus truth, change versus usury, guard versus switch, force versus shape.” (Filip Haag)
The radical overpainting (even of old images) can then take him in completely different directions. And all the directions should be as different as possible.

Because the paintings have experienced many an overpainting, many a turn, the exhibition is accompanied by the booklet WIEDER SCHEITERN – BESSER SCHEITERN, edition Haus am Gern (after Samuel Beckett’s “Always tried. Always failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”). Overpainted versions of 15 selected images become visible again – in a making-of.
Filip Haag has always thematized perception and phenomena of visibility. The booklet delves into this theme. And Balts Nill writes about Filip Haag’s forms of creativity and raises the question (without answering it) of when a painting is actually finished.