Oeuvre
With his compulsive creative urge and sharp intellect, Hannes Malte Mahler was constantly on the lookout for new ways of artistic expression, intersecting and transforming genre boundaries.
Mahler explored a wide range of genres: from drawing and painting, via digital drawings and animations, photography and styrodur installations to performances, like his
annual glitterball shootings. His art is characterised by his sharp wit and clever conclusions, and often bristling with irony, from gentle teasing to biting criticism.
Reflecting his personal chameleon-like adaptability, Mahler tackled diverse themes and topics, amongst them hidden values, wayward fairy-tales and mediocre heroes, funfairs,
revolutions and mishaps, transformations and linearity, outer space and endless loops, teleportation and disturbing phenomena, soft clouds, junk bonds and pinstripe
curtains and so much more.
His oeuvre includes several series, which the artist revisited continuously, for example the carefully staged photography of Females in the Fields, the Butt Mutts
wearing a cigar band as a collar, the satirical Generic Models juxtaposing text and drawing, or the Memory Sacks, playful allusions to the heavy burden of the past.
Not limiting himself to the canvas, Mahler painted and drew on a wide variety of found materials, from shopping bags, hotel stationery and airline sick bags to road side waste like ironing boards. His large circle of friends and acquaintances always appreciated his generous habit of regularly mailing personal scribbles and drawn comments on
recent shared events or conversations.
One of his last projects played with the fine line between art and commerce and plotted his digital drawings onto yet another surface: For his fashion label Mahlerwear, the
strange creatures, Beasts and designs he invented on the I-pad were printed on colourful t-shirts and bags - the tag-line claiming “it is art”.
