Werner Haypeter is signalling from the roof tops his first solo exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art.
Utilising the girders and I-beams that support a crane four floors up on the gallery roof, Werner Haypeter has installed 5 steel and resin paintings. Visible from Oxford Street and Bond Street as you approach the gallery and from within through the skylight, these steel framed resin paintings are based on maritime navigation signals, which are required to be clearly visible from a distance. Each painting consists of 3 sheets of resin that have a series of uniform holes punched out. The sheets have then been laminated together, painted with a fluorescent paint, framed with zinc coated galvanised steel and finally bolted to the girders on the roof. Meanwhile in the main gallery Light Field is a forest of tripods supporting glass containers, within which fluorescent lights and blue acrylic sheets emanate a radiant blue light.
This exhibition is of hermetically sealed, shimmering stainless steel and perspex constructions, PVC layered in large sheets and translucent colours. Werner Haypeter takes a manufacturing process, working within the constraints of that process so that it informs the actual work and guides its direction. What appears to be a traditional painting on closer inspection reveals itself to be a solid block of cast resin, or large sheets of overlapping PVC, the shapes and forms caused by the differing opacity or through the removal of actual material. Werner Haypeter imbues these works that have a machine made appearance with a human touch; grids of punched out circles are not quite in line, brush marks are visible on hand painted acrylic sheets, we see the artist’s hand at work, a conscious deviation that no machine could make.
Born in Germany in 1955, Werner Haypeter first exhibited with Annely Juda Fine Art in 1992. He has exhibited widely across Europe and this is his first solo exhibition in London.
