The Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders in Bergisch Gladbach opens its doors until 1 February 2026 to one of the most distinctive brushes in the art world: Eckart Hahn. Titled “Papiertiger” (Paper Tiger), this compelling exhibition brings together around 50 paintings and five sculptures drawn from Hahn’s creative process spanning the 1990s to the present. In Hahn’s art, paper is never merely a surface to paint on; it becomes the central protagonist, the symbol, and the greatest illusion of the painting itself. With extraordinary precision, the artist renders the texture of paper so convincingly with brush and paint that viewers are left in a delightful dilemma: is what they see a canvas, or an actual stack of real paper?
Paper always appears in Hahn’s paintings as a constructed fiction. Presented to us folded, torn, crumpled, or soiled, this object sometimes takes the form of a book, sometimes wallpaper, sometimes a delicate origami figure. Hahn’s scenes—built with immense painterly skill and boundless imagination—are fundamentally grounded in the fragility and transience of paper. Yet he is not simply imitating a material; he uses paper as a metaphor for how reality itself is constructed. Every tear, every fold mark points to the cracks and paradoxes in our social and individual worlds.
Within this “broken realism,” animals emerge as the most striking figures in the exhibition. Tigers, elephants, wolves, and birds become carriers of layered meaning in Hahn’s carefully staged compositions. When the power of a tiger meets the fragility of paper in the same frame, one senses how authority and the physical world are suspended by the thinnest of threads. Hahn combines subtle humour with razor-sharp precision to reveal the uncanny yet mesmerizing void behind the visible surface of our world.
The exhibition is in perfect harmony with Villa Zanders’s collection, which places paper at the centre of its artistic focus. By taking paper beyond its traditional role and transforming it into a conceptual symbol, Eckart Hahn adds an entirely new dimension to the museum’s vision in this field. Curated by Dr. Ina Dinter, this selection invites art lovers through the winter of 2026 into a discovery among paper castles, fantastical animals, and the fragile texture of reality. This journey is not merely about viewing paintings; it is also a unique opportunity to reflect on how much of the reality we construct is itself “made of paper.”
