When Irene Haenni applied for a membership in the SGBK (Swiss Society for Women Artists) her exceptional approach attracted the attention of the jury members of the museums and the Basle School of Design. As regional president of the SGBK Basle I was present when the decision was taken by the jury to accept her.

Looking at Irene Haenni’s oeuvre a central theme is visible from her early works onwards until today: the play with semiotics. She mixes and matches colours and forms into ciphers and characters on the one hand. In her unique iconography she lets aesthetically fascinating new shapes evolve, full of creative evidence, but purely hypothetical approach at the same time. On the other hand she uses a blurring technique which skillfully hides what you see behind a curtain of colours and impressions.

Irene Haenni comments her work as follows: "Processes of becoming, creating and developing but also of change and transformation are the main topics in my work. Signs and their development as well as scriptures are fascinating fields, the coexistence of colour and form I find interesting."

Irene Haenni creates compositions with the help of digital media. Following her interest in painting, music, philosophy and eastern cultures she strives to keep an innovative approach to such usual concepts as photography, names and numbers. The computer is the suitable instrument for her. She characterizes her work procedure as an ‘artistic research’.

Photos are the origin of her flower images, but also of her images with stripes. With pinpoint accuracy, reworked and modified in different ways, these photographs are printed on various materials like Canvas and Japanese Paper etc. But Irene Haenni goes even further, a Smart-Plate-Lithography is added on these Inkjet-Prints. With this procedure she deconstructs the beauty of the flower into a surface structure. Sometimes the works are adjacent overprinted several times on the inkjet-printer and the resulting combination of layers creates a stunning effect of movement and growth. A universe between appearance and reality. Doing so she involves the beholder by provoking a wide range of associations that prevent him from just glancing at her works. Her images are full of true stories, time-documents – they make us curious.

It might be possible for everyone to understand this work technique to a certain extent. I suppose however that it is difficult to recognize the magic squares as digits. When you see them for the first time, these squares seem to be a ‘closed book’. Forms of high aesthetic quality attract our interest and we have a vague idea that there is a concrete information behind them. Magic squares are symbols of happiness, they mean different things to different persons. Subsequently Irène Hänni applies a layer of photographs under the forms which leads her to a plasticity with a complex statement. Here she uses motifs out of nature but also from the technical world. On the basis of her photographs a selection process follows in order to find the formal climax. Her magic squares are a kind of mathematical calligraphy developed with a special computer program. To the pure mathematics of the development process there is a colour system closely related in which she combines shades in a 60 scale colour circle. The result of using this specific colour system are elements that seem to float freely.

I learned to know known another part of Irene Haenni’s oeuvre at the gallery Raum für Kunst und Literatur in Basle: her Artist’s Books. Here again you find her theme: semiotics. A closer look at these books is absolutely worth while.
But let the artist speak now. Who else could interpret her large oeuvre better than she. Thank you for your attention. I wish you much joy in searching for the secrets in Irene Haenni’s images.

Elfi Thoma Regional president of SGBK Basle

(translated by Helen Stauffer)

Irene Hänni (b.1964) is one of the vivid representatives of the New Media wave. In her recent works we can find a well-known dialogue that took place in the beginning of the twentieth century between the cubists and the expressionists, but presented to the viewer with the use of the new technical devices.

 

For example, in the Untitled, 2009 (sequence of 11 parts) Hänni uses inkjet-print with pigmented ink on canvas in order to demonstrate the different possibilities of interpretation of the given subject. In this work she initiates the discussion on the received ideological frame proposed by the Chinese TV. She creates a sense of contrasting realities in juxtaposing the photographs of the TV-images with her own set of images. The semiological dualism is thus resulting from the use of digital cubism of the TV-set (sign) and digital expressionism of Hänni’s vision (meaning). The main point here is to initiate a multilateral dialogue that engages spectators, the subjects within the images and the artist.

 

The proposed topic for this dialogue concerns visual and audio manipulations that are present on the TV-screens. The artist reflects the received images and thus facilitates the spectator’s non-linear perception through the provided choice of photographs. The technical side of the proposed work is described by the author herself as multi-layered. The artist proposes to break with the one-way communication of television. Already in 1958, Wolf Vostell started to use the television as an artistic medium and Hänni continues to investigate its further effects on the spectators through the means of the new artistic expression.

 

Hänni works with the digital medium. She is inspired by the ideas of Saussure and Levi-Strauss, by the works of Matisse, Kandinsky and Pipilotti Rist. She echoes the ideas once launched by the famous New Media art representative Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Hänni adopts the compositional freedom, discovered by Paik, and combines her interests in painting, music, philosophy and eastern culture in order to produce the innovative approach to such usual concepts as Names and Numbers, for example.

 

Hänni’s first steps to the multi-layered approach can be seen in her early works on the Flower Papers, 2004. According to Hänni, ‘flowers and blossoms are symbols of beauty, of life but also of perishability and death’. For many years the artist takes photographs from flowers and blossoms. The received pictures are processed in different ways on the computer, modified and printed. To the ready prints Hänni adds lithography (with the use of Smart-Plates). In some cases the work is printed over several times by a digital printer. The resulting combination of layers creates a stunning effect of movement and growth.

Hänni’s next step in the sequence of her artistic investigations concerns the representation of texts written by the Western European philosophers. The unusual sequence of 11 works called Numbers from ‘1’ to ’32’, 2005, remind the DNA-structure in movement. An interesting experiment is taking place here. Hänni proposes us to pay attention to the texts that demand considerable time and effort.

 

These works on numbers remind us of the encoded information, where the message is not communicated only through the text itself. Thus everybody can initiate a dialogue with these messages, according to his or her level of competence.

 

According to Hänni, 32 years of human life and experience can be traced while looking at each of this works. Text is presented here as a result of philosophical research by the chosen authors. For example, the text on Aesthetics by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is deeply grounded in the German philosophic tradition. The idea of Hegel’s synthesis is vividly present in Hänni’s Number’s, because she aims to create the images of her own spiritual freedom. 

Art today is seen as one of various systems of explaining and representing the world. The power of the visual media is obvious. The texts by the famous authors presented in this unusual way are seen in a new, contemporary light, thus much more interesting to discover or to be reread.

 

The interest in these authors is cleverly awakened in the spectator by Hänni’s works, because she initiates the discussion with the spectators about the meaning as a concept and suggests looking at its structure. This discussion was primarily introduced by Saussure in the beginning of the last century. Saussure proposed us to reflect on the subject of the ‘sign’ and on matters that fill it with the ‘meaning’. He had focused his attention firmly on the text and discovered that the value of each sign is determined by convention.

 

The Structuralists were later questioned by the Poststructuralists, as, for example, in the Barthes’ argument. According to Barthes, signs should make their conventionality or arbitrariness evident. Together with Derrida, Barthes moves the stress from the author’s intention to the experiences and degrees of competence of the reader. Thus the texts and numbers presented by Hänni in this sequence of eleven works can be reinvented by the creative reader into completely new text with a different level of comprehension. This example demonstrates us that artistic intention is only partially significant.

 

Meaning is communicable, so it is relatively fixed, but the reader can question the conceptual side of the given text, because the artist proposes to look at it through the prism of the time. Such humanists as Rousseau, Kant and others were perceived as producers of a single ‘theological’ meaning. With their status of the ‘author-God’ they were supposed to stay unchallenged.

 

But with the passing time, poststructuralist criticism through the analysis of the popular humanism started discovering strong argumentation against this single meaning. Poststructuralism proposed to take ‘meaning’ into multi-dimensional space and demonstrated that ‘meaning’ can exist only in the space between the reader and the text.

 

Hänni’s artworks also can be read as elaborated texts. Let us take the example of the famous humanist of the eighteenth century Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his works he stipulates that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality. Rousseau is praising nature in the majority of his writings and his influence on the late eighteenth century Romantic Naturalism movement cannot be denied.

 

But looking at his text through the apparent DNA-model (suggested by Hänni in her Numbers) something quite opposed to the Romantic Naturalism is perceived. Our thoughts are directed towards the thorough scientific investigation of nature. This is one of the possible readings that are suggested by Hänni’s artistic work.

 

There is no straightforward solution to apprehend her artistic statement about our visual reality. What is readable in it and what is actually read while being influenced by the received ideas? Her answer is almost everything is influenced by the prefabricated ideas starting from the new-born first names, texts by the classical authors and up to the TV-screens. Thus she is constantly searching the interactivity and connections between the different visual elements, between the inspiration sources (names, numbers, and photography) and new visual opportunities, such as the images of DNA, for example.

And here we see that each artistic work is about meaning and the conventional value of the sign. The experimental approach is creating the forms that are akin to the forms created by the natural processes. Hänni tries to investigate the inner side of these creative procedures. The functional meaning of the visual forms thus comes to the light.

 

The changes in these visual forms allow the better understanding of these functional meanings. The artist proposes us to look at the well-known things form from the new point of view. Hänni prefers to use the logical sequence of concepts in order to demonstrate the positive developments in life. Rousseau’s democratic ideals are produced as a text on the cobalt blue back ground thus tracing the development of democracy that took the place of the royal rule.

 

Hänni used the quotations from the illustrious philosophers from Descartes up to Habermas. To each art work corresponds the quotation from the given philosopher. For example, the Numbers on the Prussian blue back ground correspond to Hegel’s Aesthetics and on the grey background correspond to Descartes’ Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Mediations on First Philosophy).

 

In this work Descartes hopes that readers will gradually get used to his principles, thus underlining the necessity of a certain time period that should pass before his ideas could become clear to his readers. And Hänni in her turn also introduces the time component in her artwork. For her this time period stretches up to 32 years.

 

According to Eva Heller the colours are influencing our perceptions and awake our senses, so Hänni is using them with the purpose to render us more attentive to the aspects of the given texts, as well as to the overall philosophical message that is sent to us by the different authors.

 

The Magic squares, 2008, seem to be logically developed from the Numbers sequence, because they treat the philosophical subject once opened for discussion by Rousseau. This subject concerns the conflict between nature and technique, between the vital and lifeless.

 

Artistic motivation for Hänni here is to develop further the ideas of the magic square that were introduced by Albrecht Durer in the times of the High Renaissance.

Hänni’s experiments with Numbers and Magic Squares suggest the analytic approach to the famous philosophical and artistic works of the Western European thought. She proposes us to look how these works participate in our personal development during the certain period of time. This notion of the time limit is introduced by the artist through the use of the coloured and formal component. This time limit is given to each person in order to apprehend the major educational topics.

 

And the colours and formal solutions here again are used as a topic for a dialogue with the spectator. The formal solutions proposed by Hänni add the sense of dimension and movement. Thus the artist creates the colour-form-text (sign) effect in order to introduce the new visual dimensions.

 

In her work First Names, 2008, Hänni uses the most popular names given to the new-borns in Switzerland. Here again her internal motivation is to discover a new approach to the received ideas. The artist had developed images of the following 30 first names printed on canvas:

Anna, Luca, Lara, Daniele, Leonie, Joel, Julia, Alessandro, Lea, Nico, Emma, Samuel, Julie, Mattia, Sofia, Nathan, Giulia, Leo, Martina, Jan, Jasmine, Simon, Lorena, Tim, Sarah, Jonas, Eva, Thomas.

 

In undertaking this research, the artist underlines the importance of the given name in the life of each individual. She looks for a sign that could correspond to this or that name. The choice of signs is akin to the choice of names, according to Hänni: it is a conscious process.

 

In the end of the 1960s Fluxus created conditions for the new perception and analysis of reality. Hänni’s work is worth of consideration because she continues this New Media trend of apprehending reality in all its forms. Hänni, in her turn, suggests the new digital, spatial and time-conscious model, while demonstrating the new forms of the possible perception of apparently well-known elements of reality.

 

Julia Gygax M.A. in Art History, July 2010