Lexia Hachtmann
Lexia Hachtmann (born 1993, Berlin) is a British-German painter and print-maker. She completed her Art and Design Foundation Diploma in 2013 in Brighton and returned to Berlin to continue her studies in Fine Art Painting at Universität der Künste Berlin. Here, she obtained a Meister-schüler degree in the painting class of Prof. Mark Lammert in July 2021. Lexia Hachtmann is alumna of the 2022 Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt and recently completed a Master of Fine Art (MA) in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, for which she received the DAAD Grant.
Artworks
Working in both figurative oil painting and printmaking, Lexia Hachtmann's work deals with conceptions around miscommunication, identity and social hierarchies. To her, the area of the canvas presents a space on which to comprehend, reenact and visualize universal feelings of isolation, intimacy and longing. She is engaged in the motives that point to the thresholds; the boundaries between the private and public realm. This could be a physical and/or emotional space. She aims to retain a certain ambivalence in her chosen subjects so that they may speak to our current and complex times by using fragmented, cropped, blurred, awkward and/or heavily enlarged images. In this way notions of both the fragmentary and the monumental are important trajectories in her work. Lexia Hachtmann's paintings function like film-stills, paused in that very moment just before or after something has or was about to happen. Hinting at both the past and the future simultaneously, memory and longing as well as fact and fiction are important approaches to her practice.
CV
Education
2022-24 MA - Painting, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, UK
2021 Goldrausch, Künstlerinnenprojekt, Alumna, Berlin, DE
2013-21 Meisterschülerin, Universität der Künste Berlin, Fine Art,
Painting class of Prof. Mark Lammert, Berlin, DE
2012-13 Art and Design Foundation Diploma, Brighton, UK
Exhibitions
Upcoming
2024
Give Me an Inch, Pipeline Contemporary, London, UK
Nemesis, Yve Yang Gallery, New York, USA
Cass Art Prize, Copeland Gallery, London, UK
2025
Rolando Anselmi Gallery, Rome, IT
Hew Hood Gallery, London, UK (Solo)
Past (selection) 2024 Portals, Royal Overseas League, London, UK HAZE, LKIF Gallery, Seoul, KO (Solo) Degree Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK I Opened the Curtain to See What Lays Behind, carlier I gebauer, Berlin, DE MENSCHENBILDER, carlier I gebauer, Madrid, ESP SLEEP OVER, Studio Hannibal, Berlin SHADOWS OF MEMORY, Hew Hood Gallery, London, UK ALLES SCHON MAL GESEH‘N, Westgermany, Berlin, DE SOUP, The White Space, London, UK 2023 Vanitas Fair, Anton Janizewski mit Grisebach, Berlin, DE LOSING IT, Hew Hood Gallery, London (Solo) SLEEP OVER, Studio Hannibal, Berlin, DE Threads of Perception, London Paint Club, London, UK Interim, Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK Es hing in der Luft wie, Galerie Mellis, Detmold, DE (Solo) Hammer mit Studio Hütte, Zuostat, Berlin, DE 2022 WOW NOW, Setareh, Berlin, DE Needfull Things, Galerie RODZŁØ, Berlin, DE HOT MESS, Kühlhaus, Berlin, DE SHOW_5, Moodproject Gallery, Neapel, IT Eating my Head, 48 Stunden Neukölln, KINDL-Brauerei, Berlin, DE Convergence, KUNZTEN, P145, Berlin, DE BISOUS XX, Raum für Sichtbarkeit, Berlin, DE 2021 Mutual Matters - Goldrausch 2021, Fahrbereitschaft, Berlin, DE FEELINGS ARE REAL (its true), Galerie Anton Janizewski, Berlin, DE Staycation, Galeria Catinca Tabacaru, Sandwich & Malmaison Studios, Bukarest, RO Rundgang, Universität der Künste, Berlin, DE Back to Back, Studio Miller, Berlin , DE Nothing‘s gonna change my world?, gr_und mit raum www, Berlin, DE HOT MESS, Napoleon Komplex, Berlin, DE Schau, Galerie RODZŁØ, Berlin, DE Werkschau, KUNZTEN, online Awards & Grants 2024 Windsor and Newton Studio Award Studio West Residency Program Cass Art Prize (Shortlisted, winner tba November) 2023 Deutsch Akademischer Austausch Dienst Stipendium (DAAD) London Paint Club 2022 Neustart Kultur 2021 Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt 2013 Art and Design Foundation Year Residencies 2024 Studiio West, London, UK 2021 Staycation, Galeria Catinca Tabacaru, Sandwich & Malmaison Studios in Bukarest, ROM 2019 Begehungen, Chemnitz, DE 2015 Hole, Brüssel, BEL 2013 PHYSIS, Veria, GRC Projects Plötze! Festspiele am Plötzensee, Strandbad-Wedding, Berlin, DE INTERVIEWS&PRESS KUNZTEN, It‘s Nice That, She Performs, Miss You, ARTE, Artline, rundgang.io, raum www, Junge:MeisterInnen Publications 2023 London Paint Club Printedition No.3, Katalog 2021 Zwischenstand, Goldrausch. Katalog (Solo) Nothing‘s gonna change my world? gr_und, raum www, Buchprojekt Cala Blanca, Festspiele am Plötzensee, Katalog 2020 Fico Di Amalfi, Festspiele am Plötzensee, Katalog
Artist Interview
What is your studio environment like?
I try to upkeep a very regular studio practice, and aim to be at the studio every day when possible. Usuallymy studio is quiet messy, I find it hard to keep it very neat during creative processes and painting. In a way,t his dialectic of chaos and order is an important trajectory in the making. I often feel as though my task as a painter is to create my own order or arrangement with paint on the canvas, working from chaos towards an intuitive system of order. In this way a work feels finished when it can convince me of itself, and when – out of all the chaos – a certain quietness and harmony erupts from the canvas, one that feels considered, that has a life of its own and emanates its own coherence.
If you stand in front of a mirror - What would you like to see through it?
I have been very interested in the of the mirror, not as a reflector but as a looking glass – a device to see intoa different world. If this were possible I would like to see through it all the things people actually think whenthey speak to you, all the things they dream about when waiting for the bus, or lying in their beds at night andall those crazy, dream-like and often surreal imaginations that cannot be translated into language and canonly exist in visual imagery.
Could you briefly discuss the stories behind the creation of this body of work?
Painting to me is a space on which to comprehend, reenact, dream and visualize universal feelings oflonging, intimacy, isolation as well as the poetics of the everyday, the beauty in the small things, of comingtogether and emotions of ambivalence. This can be seen in the work 'Friday Night Blues', in which a figure,dressed to go out remains at home, their company being only their own silhouette on the wall behind them.Being interested in motifs that speak to how the individual navigates within society, the open window in thebackground points to this threshold. The work 'Flight' further hints at this dialectic; in the idea of freedom onthe one hand, as well as the notion of escape on the other, whilst 'Flood in Yellow' describes a moment ofsynchronicity, a sun-submerged landscapes with two figures, becoming one with them selves and the worldaround them. I want these works to conjure multiple readings; retaining a certain ambivalence that mayspeak to our current and complex times.