Henri Haake approaches inner images with narrative ease. His works recall mental snapshots. What may seem casual - an everyday moment such as children playing at a fountain - acquires a poetic quality, as if viewed through an inner lens that brings fleeting impressions into sharper focus.
How do perspectives on our surroundings change? Our gaze at an oak leaf in a puddle, our view of the Earth from space, or life itself? An excess of information leads to overlap, perhaps to memory overload, and ultimately, to dissolution.
Haake explores these processes in a non-judgmental manner: through dilution and blurring, through zooming into the essence of form or zooming into nothingness - from the small puddle to the vastness of the Milky Way.
Like the fountain scene, the first images on the canvas evolve. Figures appear, are painted over in layers, and yet persist. A visual memory emerges in which nothing is ever completely erased, but everything remains interwoven, sometimes more, sometimes less visible. Figurative elements move toward dissolution; construction and destruction merge.
Alongside classic oil on canvas, Haake combines various techniques such as media transfers on canvas, pigmentless oil paste layers, or sand. The triptych - a recurring form in his work - plays with sequential storytelling, ranging from (Memling's) mother with child and origins to (Lübeck's) dance of death and transience (chorus, 2025). Iconographic motifs, such as the Mary with Child, are recontextualized, as if retold through the lens of the present.
His paintings always embody the movement of creation. Each layer tells a story that remains open-ended. Flowing like the water that pervades his works with a silent rhythm, Haake renders memory and change visible.