Eric Hattan

Swiss artist Eric Hattan (born 1955) creates his work from the everyday. He needs only the most simple things: packaging that he turns inside out; furniture that he pins against the ceiling with wooden poles; shoes that walk up a wall; or his own clothes as an image for the artist?s presence. Everything is lifesize, also in his video works that take a close look at common details and incidents. It is not an innocentgaze, though, and spectators have to be fully aware of what they perceive, if it is an actual room or just a small model behind the spy hole, if it is a structural column or just a plaster stand-in. There even seem to be traces of violent intervention: breeched walls, giant street lamps bent or torn out of the floor ... if aesthetics are an ordering of the world, then here that order is stood on its head. Eric Hattan became an artist the practical way, by engaging with the world and organizing0the local art scene, especially though the off-space Filiale, which he first opened in 1981. This book presents the artist's complete journey, an overview of works always reinvented in situ, in hundreds of installation images and video stills and a collection of essays that for the first time present the artist?s oeuvre from all angles. There emerges an artistic approach that is not about the conquest of ever new spheres, but about the open exploration of sidelines. Hattan?s work develops seemingly familiar terrain and inspires us for our own encounter of the everyday.