"The starting point of my current artistic work is the imagery of advertising, which you encounter in the form of large-format outdoor advertising in public places and on streets, but also as cultural posters, for example as museum and exhibition posters," says artist Hans Manhart, describing his current artistic work. He uses this cosmos of images as a direct impulse and source material for his artistic work.

The objects of his creative work are fallen, sometimes rain-soaked poster parts from the eight-part outdoor panels of the "Deutsche Städtereklame" or poster tear-offs from advertising pillars.

According to Manhart, both advertising media are becoming increasingly rare in the age of digitalization, and it can be said that poster-based outdoor advertising is becoming less common overall and is gradually disappearing.

"To break up the advertising character in terms of content, I use the design medium of collage and overpainting.
In some cases, fragments of images or text are rotated, layered and combined with each other, whereby spontaneity and chance determine the image," explains the artist.

The decollaged image and text fragments are then applied to canvases. The same principle applies as with public posters: the parts are pasted on, partially pasted over, layered, torn up again and uncovered. He reacts to the pictorial symbolism of advertising with the means of painting.

Influenced by the decollages of the 60s and 70s by the Italian artist Mimmo Rotella, he creates new combinations by overlapping and playing off contrasts of form and color, by cutting, omitting and doubling, which are intended to make the viewer take a closer look.

At the same time, the often fleeting surface appeal of advertising is broken and gives way to a subtle questioning of the original meaningfulness and significance by emphasizing details and alienation. The canvases are then impregnated with a thin layer of glue.

"As abstract as the paintings are, they almost always allow for associations and also create a connection between reality and fiction," says Manhart, summarizing the viewer's reactions to his works. On closer inspection, they tell of finding, of the past, the fragmentary, the relic-like, as well as of joining, connecting, arranging, interpreting and evaluating.
"They condense time, change and transformation, often emphasizing the purely coincidental and intuitive. But this keeps them open and ready for other people's associations," explains the artist.

1952 Born in Goslar
1972 to 1977 studied art education and free painting at the HBK Braunschweig
1977 to 1979 postgraduate studies in free painting at HBK Braunschweig
1981 to 1986 Lectureship in painting, Department of Cultural Education, Hildesheim University of Applied Sciences
Member of the artists' group "arche Hameln" and the BBK Braunschweig
Director of the Bad Harzburg town hall gallery since 2014
Hans Manhart lives and works in Bad Harzburg.