hendrik jaich

soft focus

june 13 - august 09, 2025

In Hendrik Jaich’s first solo show, the bold contrasts and expressive gestures that often characterize his work give way to new, more nuanced gradients and precise graphic elements. And yet, Soft Focus clearly continues the artist’s conceptual approach: an attempt to extract uncompromising truths from the reliability of supposedly incorruptible codes - an ongoing theme already present in his earlier works. In Soft Focus he channels the longing for a positive outcome - hope extracted from data and technical functions. The result is a series of efforts by the artist not to lose the battle against the uncontrollable, using pedantic formal discipline to shape overly precise order into complex compositions.

At first, the three large-scale paintings titled [to reach] appear unusually distant for works by Hendrik Jaich—almost subdued. They radiate a sense of strict, methodical restraint. They depict dense layers of clouds that cannot be assigned to any specific location. These are skies that could exist anywhere, merged into a vast, threatening plane stripped of any sense of direction. Within this suspended field, vivid green lines form a grid-like structure - traces of a digital system whose highly organized reference points promise orientation. Yet this order is not absolute as charcoal drawings cross fragmented white overlays - fragmentary interruptions on the otherwise obsessively precise surface.

As the light changes, so too does the visual presence of the series altogether - the highly reflective white rectangles at times create the illusion of a fourth work, extending into the surrounding space. The charcoal then resembles signs of erosion - traces of deliberately induced disruptions, gestures of frantic helplessness and desperation. Errors within a system that ultimately fails in its attempt to simulate stability. Not only do the hatchings foreshadow the impending loss of control; they embody it in the rhythm of the manic strokes that contrast the otherwise rigorously clear lines. Set within matte black frames, the impression is reinforced that these works do not constitute fully articulated statements but rather excerpts of unresolved conditions - depictions of a system on the verge of total collapse. They form an impulsive antithesis to the subtly aggressive coldness that runs through the exhibition as a subtle undercurrent of technically coded indifference. Isolated moments, preserved in acrylic and unpolished steel.

In this context, [untitled (opera window)] forms both a formal and conceptual counterpoint within the exhibition. Thermal images of nocturnal landscapes - manipulated to the edge of abstraction - serve as projection surfaces for the artist’s imagined attempts of a rescue. These scenes are not documentations but visual constructs of theatrically distorted realities. Printed on translucent mesh and stretched over aluminium frames, the thermographic fragments are far removed from their original context. Turned into objects, they express a longing to finally be found.

felix siegl