Birdman Hans Langner is a self-taught artist who created his first artworks in 1989. Seven years later after a performance, whilst living in Hong Kong, in which he transformed himself from a human into a bird, a journalist referred to him as ‘The birdman of Hongkong’. A Chinese man then said to him, ‘You are called birdman, but you don’t paint birds?’ It was a comment that fundamentally changed his artistic direction:from that day forth, for nearly thirty years, birds have been the recurrent theme in his work!
While the bird is a strong motif in his work, it is primarily rooted in the idea of that with flight comes freedom hence the name of the exhibition wegfliegen which translates to ‘fly away’ in German. The appeal, for Hans, is the original material’s potential for transformation and its innate aesthetic qualities. Recently Langner has mainly dedicated his work to installations and painting on tapestries and similar fabrics, material from varying sources including flea markets across Europe and the Birgu flea market which Hans visits during his stays on the Maltese islands.
Although the artist’s work has been exhibited in Malta before, some years ago, this is the first time he has shown his art at Valletta Contemporary. A small number of pieces date from Langner’s time in Hong Kong in the 1990s. However most of the works have been created here during a two-month residency earlier this year.
And Wegfliegen is a charming exhibition which is great fun on the surface, a veritable aviary of hundreds of perky birds, many of which are aboriginal in their simplicity. I say an aviary rather than a flock as the show is deliberately static rather than kinetic. The birds on paper, and on fabric are characterful but are, perhaps, ‘captured’ like butterflies in Victorian cases, as often as not in standing stances rather than dynamic soaring shapes.
Although it’s appealing and engaging, there’s a darker side to the works as a collection: it’s a combination that reminds me of the Roald Dahl children’s book The Magic Finger. (Remember the one in which a human family of hunters and the family of ducks at whom their pointing their guns find themselves switched? It certainly changes the view of the human characters.)
Many appear as absences, areas of the fabric which Langner has left unpainted – their have patterning drawn from the tapestry or fabric beneath in golds and blues, or mixed colours of the natural world. Some have sequinned eyes that glint in the light, others don’t and might these birds represent gaps, as he sees them, in the ecosystem?
Langner ‘finds’ his birds in stitch and draws them, as totems on glass for example as well as on found paper of different types: these are birds from all eras, interchangeable, their similarities clear. Downstairs the aesthetic twists back and forth from modern -with a rug in emerald green – a hue you can imagine in an Ikea catalogue – alongside velvet-trimmed wall hangings that with their curled edges, evoke ancient or medieval eras. Upstairs, selected sets are presented in heavy gold frames giving weight to the birds’ value, and their existence ecologically perhaps. Some are sketchy in heavy marker pen whilst others find or mould birdlike characters from manmade tools such as pliers or -bizzarely- the iconic wrapper of a Tunnock’s tea cake.
Another set on anatomical drawings, of man. Hinting perhaps at the bird inside all of us, a longing for freedom, our evolutionary past (as mammals arose from dinosaurs whom you might argue were rather bird-like) and our connectedness ecologically, with bird acting as crucial pollinators and seed dispersers.
Others have the delightful innocence of storybook characters at a child’s bedtime. Interestingly, directly opposite these works, and in stark contrast, there is a series of Owls printed on found paper: here Langner’s marks are simple lines that obliterate them in a step-by-step process. We feel for them, and we would feel their loss from the world. Is it significant that owls represent wisdom?
A jumpsuit patterned with birdlife is another piece of particular note: it hangs opposite a pattern of shotgun cartridges on the floor, a commentary on the hunting that takes place on these islands, and you can’t help but wonder if the April timing if this show is anything but coincidence.
Another piece that greets visitors on their arrival into this glorious gallery space is a small golden bird sculpture, one of only two pieces in this central room on the ground floor. It stands upon a small cage that’s a replica of the thousands that hang on porches and balconies across the nation. Here Hans is freeing a bird illustrating his belief that birds should be treated with dignity and respect. This metal model has escaped captivity but many spend all their days incarcerated in this way. Are they loved? Do they dream of freedom?
The most powerful piece in the show, for me, however, is a spiral of 25 winged people, like golden angels, lying on the ground. Almost all are rough hand-built characters made from clay in a naive style, each on golden cardboard: look again and three are figures of Christ collected from flea markets overpainted in gold, and lying as if on the cross. Is Langner suggesting parallels between an innocent shot-down bird, arguably a victim of an unnecessary cruelty, and Christ’s lifeless figure on the cross, or was his intention was to ‘decrucify’ Christ, to allow Him freedom from the Cross and from suffering. Are his golden wings alluding to his ascension to heaven? One of these is the only figure to have black or blackened feather wings. And whilst all these figures also evoke Icarus who singed his wings as he flies too close to the sun, could the black wings, the only real feathers in the show, denote truth. It’s a though-provoking finale.
Wegfliegen by birdman Hans Langner runs until May 3 at Valletta Contemporary
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