BERLIN.- During a studio visit, I asked Daniel Hauptmann about a work with a camouflage pattern painted on it, saying that its layered panels and curved contours reminded me of a car, or the body of some kind of vehicle. A landscape machine, he suggested in response. The phrase stuck with me, not only because of the strange humour in it, but because it’s an interesting proposition – that a work of art could be a kind of machine, that it is for doing something.

Questions about function versus representation arise often in Daniel Hauptmann’s work, without ever quite finding a conclusion. Hovering somewhere between painting and sculpture, his practice suggests an ambivalent relationship to both, and a reluctance to be reduced to the ‘merely decorative’. His boxy constructions often borrow aspects of furniture design: panels, thresholds, cabinets, casings to house and conceal inner mechanisms. Smooth surfaces might be engraved or collaged to form abstract reliefs, sometimes embellished with painterly detailing, sometimes remaining a sturdy, blank monochrome. Small protrusions might resemble handles, while holes and grills hint at interior architectures hidden within. There is a resemblance to certain religious architectures, such as a church tabernacle – a cabinet or vessel in which consecrated items are locked away, or triptych altarpieces in which painted panels are hinged together and can be closed to protect their holy icons. In these examples, function also brings a level of symbolism: of exclusivity, secrecy and sanctity – that only a certain privileged few are granted access to the key.

At the same time, the cut outlines and more painterly details within Hauptmann’s works resemble abstracted natural forms: reeds in water, fallen leaves or dappled foliage. An opening between two panels might appear as a window into a shadowy thicket or a windswept pond. Although Hauptmann cuts, engraves and constructs these works by hand rather than machine, he later coats his compositions with thick, even coats of paint, synthesising the marks and protrusions into one continuous surface. This introduces a slight tension between the intimate connotations of hand-made craftsmanship and the impersonal precision of machines, raising questions of authenticity and imitation.

A direct English translation of the exhibition’s title – Heimsuchung– could be ‘home searching’, but interpretations include visitation, haunting, affliction, infestation. There are religious connotations, but usually it connotes something bad. So, what is haunted about Hauptmann’s works? What is their affliction? Perhaps it’s the indeterminacy – the wavering between function and display, interior and exterior. With sealed volumes, abstract allusions, and architectural suggestions, they are always slightly gesturing towards some space elsewhere – inaccessible, or perhaps entirely imaginary.

--- Bryony Dawson