Detail from a work by birdman Hans Langner & Exhibition poster of Wegfliegen

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WEGFLIEGEN
A solo exhibition by birdman Hans Langner

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birdman Hans Langner seeks found objects such as tapestries, books, paintings and other reclaimed visual material and looks for the birds within. After two decades, his technique has continued to evolve being self-described as, ‘Making the invisible bird, visible. By painting away, I am freeing the birds from the tapestries.’ 

Hans spends time observing existing material approaching with curiosity to free birds from their rigidity, to let them fly again. Rather than introducing avian creatures to a canvas, he allows them to emerge by painting over other visual material through a technique termed in German as bemaltetapisserie (painted tapestry). 

A frequent visitor to the Maltese islands, Wegfliegen draws together work produced during Hans’ two-month residency at Gozo Contemporary. Through objects collected across flea markets, locally and globally, he presents a body of work which reflects the artists’ ongoing exploration of the bird as a recurring motif in his work. 

Portrait of birdman Hans Langner

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birdman Hans Langner (b. 1964, Germany) is a self-taught artist who created his first artworks in 1989, and henceforth dedicated his life to art. Since 1994 birdman has featured in numerous exhibitions and performances in galleries in Europe, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China and America, in private collections and in several museums, including the Museum de Stadshof in Zwolle, in the Netherlands, and in the Museum "THE VERSI" in Korea. Since 2006 birdman was featured in a standing exhibition at the Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent, in Belgium, and since 2014 in a standing exhibition at the museum gugging, in Maria Gugging, Austria.

At one performance in Hongkong in 1996 Hans Langner transformed himself from a human into a bird, at which point a journalist referred to him as ‘The birdman of Hongkong’, the name by which he is now known. One year later a Chinese man asked him: ‘You are called birdman, but you don’t paint birds?’ This comment fundamentally changed his artistic work. Since that day birds have been his leitmotiv.
For the last few years he has mainly dedicated his work to installations and painting on tapestries and Gobelins.