Christoph Hänsli:

Erledigt

Opening: Friday, January 23, 6 - 8 pm

Rämistrasse 33, Zurich

Hänsli is known for his figurative paintings of found or collected everyday objects, rendered at a 1:1 scale. Often overlooked or considered insignificant, these objects are approached with quiet attention and subtle, understated humour. Through painting, Hänsli shifts them from the realm of use into that of contemplation, granting them a new presence and an unexpected dignity.

At the centre of Erledigt is a new series of painted lists: crossed-out or checked-off to-do lists, order notes, and handwritten reminders. Familiar tools of daily organisation, these lists usually serve a practical purpose before quickly being discarded or forgotten. Hänsli depicts them at the moment they have lost their function, transforming them into poetic and sensuous images. In doing so, he invites a transition from reading to looking, from utility to reflection.

Human figures are largely absent in these works, yet their presence is strongly felt through traces—handwriting, markings, erasures, and layers of paint. Hänsli’s paintings are built up through multiple strata, from background to foreground, making visible a sequence of moments that all belong to the past. Tasks, words, or notes are often heavily crossed out, gradually dissolving into abstraction. What remains are rhythms, forms, and patterns that leave viewers wondering what was once written and what has already been forgotten.

Alongside the list paintings, Erledigt includes works that revisit recurring motifs in Hänsli’s oeuvre: language and typography, residues and leftovers, closed surfaces that conceal what lies behind them. Throughout the exhibition, a tension unfolds between presence and absence, completion and disappearance, meaning and loss. Hänsli’s characteristic serious humour approaches these themes with care and restraint, revealing the quiet absurdities embedded in everyday life.

With Erledigt, Christoph Hänsli opens a contemplative space in which ordinary human traces are given renewed attention. In an increasingly fast-paced and noisy world, the exhibition proposes a slower mode of seeing—one that allows for stillness, recognition, and a sense of belonging.