Horst Haack

Like a visit to an unusual zoo, Horst Haack presents us with his animal life in an ostensibly lexical form—a disturbing yet fascinating work. The invented animals are bastards, hybrids, impossible children of love, some whimsically harmonious apparitions, others disconcertingly unpleasant contemporaries. These creatures with hitherto unheard-of names possess almost unbelievable characteristics: dog viper, spiny jellyfish, scale runner, drive baiter. Nevertheless, these imaginary creatures allow parallels to known animal species to be established. The quirky monsters appear real, and some descriptions fit more to a human than to an animal. The artist chooses for this the factual-concrete language of a zoologist, which makes us imagine the images and texts as reality.