About

HP Hettich was a late entrant to art, although he had already intensively studied freehand drawing while being an architect. From 1992 onwards, he created over 750 mostly small-format photo collages, initially as postcards,as a counterweight, so to speak, to the work as an architect, which is always subject to many constraints.

The first of his numerous exhibitions at home and abroad took place in 1997. His poetic, paradoxically playful and yet formally precisely structured and nuanced in color Collages attracted great interest, which encouraged him to pursue art more and more become and have it become part of his career. The photo collage was followed by photography. His trained eye scanned walls, remnants of walls, searched structures, delighted in the beauty of the ephemeral, documented age, found traces, alienations and delightful absurdities.

During a long stay in Los Angeles in 2003, he found himself walking along the Boulevards, finding interest in everyday trash, such as heels, parking tickets, playing cards, bottle caps, rusted, flattened, fragments of metal, cardboard, paper and plastic. He found interest in things of everyday life, which he was able to give a new meaning in his assemblages. What was thrown away, lost from the field of meaning gained a “second glance”, a second life; These objects were included in the design process and thus became part of the art object.

HP Hettich “recognized” new content in the resulting compositions, but at the same time leaving the viewer free space for their own imagination.

In his later stages he created pixelated art using only burned and colorful matches that he collected from the street. Through this process he inherited his nick name: ‘The Matchstick Man’.

HP Hettich died in spring 2015.