The HALFA work encompasses eight phases of creation, each developing from the previous and some of them overlapping. These eight phases include, amongst others, roller paintings and Moiré paintings, ‘scenographics’, made scenes, and camera works. In this second solo exhibition, we are focussing on the scenographics series of works. We invite you to join us in discovering the work of HALFA, 20th May – 9th July 2016.

Scenogrpahics 1979-2002, Projizierte Sinnverküpfungen im Numerikalwerk (Projected Sense Connections in a Numerical Work)

Halfa: Each of the numbers 1 to 49 is arranged in a square such that the seven numbers of each of the horizontal rows sum to the same total (175) as the sum of the seven numbers placed in each of horizontal columns and the diagonal. A so-called ‘magic square’, a map of numbers. It is through reference to this standardised matrix of numbers, presented as a photocopy on a 21cm square of paper, that it becomes possible – in projections of free association, innovatively, playfully, ironically in itself, as well as seriously, sometimes subversively, as well as pragmatically and, where possible, revealingly – to scenographically represent forms of thought, as a visual linking of the senses, even diagrammatically against the visual-intellectual backdrop of a square grid. In so doing, all imaginable artistic means, all that has been available to me in the course of well over twenty years, come into use. It is on these graphical pages that the great variety of paradoxes in the work becomes evident.

“Doubt has a method.”

From the magic square to a profane number map, from a picture of digits to a diagram, from concept to typeset, from a map of squares to a map of a picture, from this surface to the colour-perspective space of the stage, the artistic process is formed as a scenographic undertaking – I place it in the scene. The variety of effects that result have conflicting surface forms; from the simple to the in-part broadly-coloured, almost haptically dream-like attractive power of the work, combined with a cold, sparse creation of the surface image, which challenges the observer through the rift it creates in one’s visual impression.

Detlef Halfa (1950-2006)

né Detlef Halfpap and originally from Celle, studied under Franz Erhardt Walther at the State University of the Fine Arts in Hamburg from 1973 to 1978. Following postings to New York, Hamburg and Cologne, HALFA, as he was to be known from 1979 onwards, settled in Berlin and opened his workshop, ‘Manufactura Scenografia’. It was here that he developed his concept of so-called ‘roller painting’. Beyond this, he occupied himself with depicting rolled or drawn lines, with installations in architectural contexts, as well as contextual photography. Along with many solo and group exhibitions in Germany and abroad, his work has been the subject of a promotional stand at the Art Cologne exhibition, and has been exhibited at the Kunstverein Hamburg in 1986, at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart in 1997, and in 2008 at Berlin’s Kunstallianz 1. Since 2014, mianki.Gallery in Berlin has been representing and reviewing HALFA’s works.

Artist portrait HALFA