Galerie Hubert Winter

Marcia Hafif
obsessive compulsion
8. March – 20. April 2013
Ihr Wille vollzog sich in diesem Augenblick, nichts trennte sie mehr von sich selbst.
Sie hatte endlich gewählt. Sie hatte sich gewählt.
Die letzten Zeilen. In: Simone de Beauvoir, Sie kam und blieb. Dt.v.E.Rechel-Mertens. Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1953.

When Marica Hafif (born 1929 in Pomona, California) faced her own artistic work a recommencement in the early 1970ties, she discovered a way to oppose the crisis of painting and deprive her work from historical and current conceivabilities. By taking the analysis of painting away from pure conceptual basic research and using it as an act of freedom, her complete Oeuvre was confronted with a change of paradigm. The development of the Inventory is so far singular in its consequent conceptual demand to painting. Marcia Hafif did not limit herself to a formalistic level, she involves the space with his aesthetic reception within her exhibitions, allows the composition to return and the paintings to communicate with each other.

„obsessive compulsion“ can be seen as a composed installation, a score with paintings, photography and drawings that covers 39 years. The photo series „Pomona Houses“ (1970), „Karlsaue Lake“ (1977), „The Lake“ (from the 1990s) and „The Grill“ (1991-92) take us on a private trip with the artist. „Black Ink Drawings“ from 1974 testify that even monotone repetition produces changing results. With each day, each mood and same signature the outcome is always slightly different. Out of last group of paintings from the Inventory ”Orange and Green” (2009/10) some of these special colourful paintings integrate themselves in a poetical way.