TIAGO HACKE

• Could you please present yourself ?

My name is Hacke, Tiago Hacke, I was born in Germany in 1985 (33 y.o.) grew up in Portugal. At 14 years old I got interested in graffiti which quickly became an obsession to me, and this got me involved in painting canvases too. When I was 17, I moved to Luxembourg were I learned a bit of classical drawing, at 19 I proceeded to study Fine Art painting BA degree at Manchester Metropolitan University, in England. Once my degree accomplished, in 2008 I decided to move to France, to keep studying at ENSBA fine art school in Paris. There my conflict with painting begun; I was questioning myself « what is the point of adding more images to the world? A world that produces already so much imagery, and most for the wrong reasons… »

I wanted to work on the real world, so I started to explore video, recording real live stuff, interacting with people, avoiding being closed in a studio practice, In 2011 on my masters degree (DNSAP) I showed an experimental documentary filmed during 3 years, with Roma (gipsy) communities in the Parisian outskirts. After that I stared working and almost stopped my art practice during 2 years. Quickly to realize that painting brought me sensations that I could not explain and I could not find with any other medium. So I quit my job, moved to Portugal and I started to explore my passion. Starting everything from scratch experimenting and learning new techniques, I approached painting from a very opposite angle than from when I was a student; I created a small economy around my artwork and I started painting commercially by commission, I learned a lot on this process, things we don’t learn during studies in fine art schools. Nowadays I paint what I see and what I feel on my perception experience, Im exploring my imagination and a new world is unfolding.

• What kind of relation do you have with your art ?

I am researching on how to transmit sensations with painting in a mirroring the world type of practice, im trying to make people recognize a bit of their world, a bit of themselves in the ideas that im exploring. I have a sort of sensorial obsession with figurative painting; the effects of brush strokes harshly marked on a canvas and thick paint mixing up on the surface, all the the procedure of creating and image absolutely fascinates me.

The plasticity of paint as a medium is super interesting, it allows me to create illusions and still leaving a heavy sensation of matter. I love figuration, different ways of representing forms, characters or narratives, thoughts about this world or imaginary ones. For me the production of images can be completely deprived of inherent sense; we dont need to convey an idea, we can simply play with figuration and the meaning that images bring us. Im probably a bit of an absurdist in the « why’s » of my artistic creation.

• What are your inspirations ?

I feel an urge, an impulse to paint, its automatic, then my inspirations for the themes of my paintings comes from diverse sources; from my sense perception of the world, it comes from feeling alive, my curiosity to explore visual sensations and paradoxes in my ideas; it comes from little curious things and events I notice around me; some are the epiphanies than come to my mind when I’m trying to make sense of the world. I try to translate feelings and situations I experience on the canvas, some are really random everyday events that reveal absurdity in human behavior. Sometimes is just the contemplation of a beautiful object or landscape, or just some light effects on diverse surfaces like water or a fish’s skin, this gives me a enormous will to paint. Also humour and light emotions really inspire me to develop the concepts I explore. I also absolutely lust on public artworks, graffiti, big walls covered with street art. Some artists can be really inspiring too by the freedom that they seem to express in their artworks.

• What would be the key word of your work ?

Figurative-absurdism… if that is a thing.

• What are your future projects and your wishes ?

I just arrived from a trip to Laos and Vietnam where I painted quite a lot of landscapes, in a very contemplative and loose manner, I want to print them in a travel book and sell it, and in one year time i’ll make another illustrated trip, probably to India.

I feel like exploring humorous narratives in painting, because I would like to bring some lightness and positive sensations to my figurative painting, I am also working quite a lot on painting murals, developing my own style and technique. On the canvases im trying to inform my practice by learning different techniques of painting and figuration to be more and more free in my creative process.