Alexander Hahn (born 1954) is an artist working with electronic media. An artistic innovator in his field, he integrates the time-based form of video with practices of computer imagery and print, animation, virtual reality, installation, and writing. He addresses the electronic image as a technological metaphor for perception, memory and dream: signals oscillate between lighting up and blanking out, between sensory presence, mental apparition and oblivion. As art historian Dominique Radrizzani writes in the catalog Astral Memories of a Flying Man: "It is this luminous realm of dream that Hahn’s great art of light and shadow rediscovers, using video like those infinite eyes which night has opened in us (Novalis) ... The terrains explored by Hahn are not those of the terrestrial globe anymore, but rather those of the ocular globe, the inward looking hemisphere of the eye."

Life

Hahn was born in Zurich and grew up in

Rapperswil-Jona Rapperswil-Jona is a municipality in the ''Wahlkreis'' (constituency) of See-Gaster in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Besides Rapperswil and Jona, which were separate municipalities until 2006, the municipality includes Bollingen, Bussk ...

, Switzerland. Introduced to computers while at the gymnasium Kantonsschule Zürcher Oberland in Wetzikon (1966–1973), he created a game of snakes and ladders in the

APL (programming language) APL (named after the book ''A Programming Language'') is a programming language developed in the 1960s by Kenneth E. Iverson. Its central datatype is the Array data type#Multi-dimensional arrays, multidimensional array. It uses a large range of ...

. During his studies in

Visual arts education Visual arts education is the area of learning that is based upon the kind of art that one can see, visual arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practic ...

at the

Zurich University of the Arts Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK, german: Zürcher Hochschule der Künste) has approximately 2,500 students, which makes it the largest arts university in Switzerland. The university was established in 2007, following the merger between Zurich' ...

(Bachelor in 1979), he made his first videos and Super8 films, e.g. «Flight and Glass» (1976) or the

Mockumentary A mockumentary (a blend of ''mock'' and ''documentary''), fake documentary or docu-comedy is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on c ...

«Demis» (1977) about the singer

Demis Roussos Artemios "Demis" Ventouris-Roussos ( ; el, Αρτέμιος "Ντέμης" Βεντούρης-Ρούσσος, ; 15 June 1946 – 25 January 2015) was a Greek singer, songwriter and musician. As a band member he is best remembered for his work in ...

. In 1981, he moved to New York and participated in the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...

Independent Study Program (ISP). In 1990, he spent nine months in Rome as a fellow of the Istituto Svizzero. Between 1991 and 1994, he lived in Berlin, first as a fellow of the DAAD, the

German Academic Exchange Service The German Academic Exchange Service, or DAAD (german: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), was founded in 1925 and is the largest German support organisation in the field of international academic co-operation. Organisation ''DAAD'' is a ...

, then as

Artist-in-residence Artist-in-residence, or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs which involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs which provide artists with space a ...

at ART+COM. From 1995 to 1997, he lived in Warsaw. Today, Hahn lives and works in the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and in Zurich.

Work

In her analysis "Miniature and Series: The Re-invention of the Epistolary Form in the Work of Alexander Hahn", Cathie Payne writes that his "method of engaging with the very small, the fleeting, and the momentary, is part of an intimate, deeply personal and reflexive practice that offers a way to reproach the world through this change of scale - a world in miniature - and to reflect on this strangeness, vastness and beauty of what is found within the context of accelerated urban density and a changing anthropogenic worldview."
Since his first exhibition at the Lucerne Gallery Apropos in 1978, Hahn showed his work worldwide in over 20 solo exhibitions and in over 100 group shows and video festivals. In 2007, the Kunstmuseum Solothurn and

Museum der Moderne Salzburg The Museum der Moderne Salzburg has two buildings at two different locations in Salzburg, Austria. The Rupertinum in the old town for new artistic concepts opened in 1983 and the Museum on the Mönchsberg for modern art in a contemporary setting op ...

organized a retrospective about his work.
The

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

showed his interactive work "Luminous Point" in 2008 in the bi-personal show "Room for Thought - Alexander Hahn and Yves Netzhammer."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hahn, Alexander 1954 births Living people Swiss artists Zurich University of the Arts alumni Artists from New York City People from Rapperswil-Jona Video art