Eric Hattan (born 1955) is a Swiss visual artist and educator. He is primarily known as a conceptual artist, video artist, performance artist and installation artist. Hattan lives and works in Basel and Paris.
Biography Eric Hattan was born on 1955 in Wettingen, Baden District, Aargau, Switzerland.
His first solo exhibition was in 1981 in St. Gallen. In the 1990s, he sometimes exhibited alongside artist Silvia Bächli, whom he married. He later collaborated in exhibitions with artist Werner Reiterer.
Artwork
Hattan departs from concrete objects and spaces. He questions places, architectures and situations of all-day-life through breaking regularities and subverting the assumed stasis of the world with playful irony. The rearrangement of clothing, furniture, pedestals or monitors plays a decisive role in his oeuvre, even became independent and exposes given situations to unbiased observation. Hattan directs his gaze on processes and incidents in the urban space through his video camera. During expeditions through cities and their peripheries he discovers a potential of plastic forms, which complete, comment or permeate his installative works since the 1990s. The phenomenological exploration of daily processes and random movements leads him often to construction sites. Not yet or not anymore used zones, property just before demolition or during a building freeze, waste land and nowhere land, lay bare sculptural qualities, which challenge the artist to different insights. Hattan's usually temporary projects in public space are evidence of an interest in inverting the view on the familiar.
Hattan's artistic career developed parallel to his early engagement for a young scene of artists, with whom he realized many exhibitions and performances in the self-organized Basel project space Filiale during the 1980s and 1990s.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions 2000/01: Beton liquide, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau / MAMCO musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Genève 2003: Kennen sie DIE?, with Werner Reiterer, Kunsthaus Baselland Muttenz near Basel; Liquid concrete, Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York 2004: Kunstverein Bremerhaven 2005: Echelle, Echec et Réverb, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg; Vous êtes chez moi, FRAC Alsace, Sélestat 2007: Eintagsfliegen, Kunstvereinsheim, Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel; Eric Hattan, Skopia Art Contemporain, Genève 2008: S cul türe Physique, Gallery Hervé Bize, Nancy 2009: Carte blanche, MAC/VAL, Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine 2010: Hinkel, MAP / The Chain, Düsseldorf 2011: Schnee bis im Mai with Silvia Bächli, Kunsthalle Nürnberg 2012: Handarbeit, Gallery Weingrüll, Karlsruhe 2013: What About Sunday? with Silvia Bächli, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes 2014: Solo Exhibition at FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Marseille
Group exhibitions 2002: in capital letters, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; Art Unlimited, Art 33, Basel 2004: situations construites, 10 ans d'attitudes, Attitudes, Genève; So wie die Dinge liegen, Phoenix Halle, Dortmund 2005/06: Reprocessing Reality, Château de Nyon and MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York 2007: In Situ, Le Quartier, Centre d'art Contemporain, Quimper 2008: Les Ateliers de Rennes, Biennale d'Art contemporain, Rennes; Le printemps de septembre, Espace Beaux-Arts, Toulouse 2010: Art Public, Art 41, Basel 2011: The Beirut Experience I, Beirut Art Center 2012: Nouvelles boîtes!, Kunstmuseum Luzern 2013: Les Pleiades 30 ans des FRAC, FRAC Midi-Pyrénées à Toulouse
Publications Beton liquide: Eric Hattan - Video, ed. by Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau and Lars Müller Publishers, Red. Stephan Kunz, incl. a text by Kathrin Becker (ger./fr./engl.), Baden: Lars Müller, 2000. Ideeavoir: Eric Hattan, ed. by Sabine Schaschl-Cooper, Muttenz/Basel: Kunsthaus Baselland, 2003. Eric Hattan: Niemand ist mehr da - Vous êtes chez moi, incl. a text by Maja Naef and Ralph Ubl (ger./fr./engl.) and a DVD, Berlin: Holzwarth Publications, 2006. Silvia Bächli, Eric Hattan: Schnee bis im Mai, ed. by Kunsthalle Nürnberg, with texts by Raphaële Jeune, Michael Semff and Harriet Zilch (ger./engl.), Köln: Snoeck, 2011.
References
External links
Official website