The events captured in Filip Henin's (b. Mayen 1986 lives and works in Berlin) paintings are
set in a world beyond time and place as though on an empty stage prepared for a Samuel Beckett
production. It is virtually impossible to say whether a picture shows a coastal region or a
craggy slope up in the mountains whether a field of blue represents the sea or a band of open
sky. Henin strips landscapes down no less than human figures subtracting specific features to
isolate basic forms that might be found in the hill country around his hometown in western
Germany or in Tuscany. His work integrates quotations from antiquity Romantic landscape
painting and postmodernism as well as Italian Transavanguardia the mysticism of Francesco
Clemente and Sandro Chia and the figurative painting of the 1990s. Without veering into drama
or pathos he harnesses two utterly antithetical energies: the reflection on painting and the
history of art and the need to be simple.
