Barry Flanagan and the Adventure of Materiality at Galerie Max Hetzler: “On the other hand” Exhibition

Galerie Max Hetzler, located at Bleibtreustraße 45 — an address renowned in Berlin’s art history — is preparing to host an exciting retrospective in early 2026. The exhibition titled “On the other hand” honors the artistic legacy of British sculptor Barry Flanagan (1941–2009). As the artist’s third solo presentation at the gallery, the show centers on the material diversity and hierarchy-free formal investigations spanning more than fifty years of his career. It meticulously documents how an extensive range of materials — from industrial sand to fabric, from stone to bronze — are transformed into artistic subjects. The exhibition title is derived from a phrase Flanagan inherited from his father and frequently used in conversation; it serves as a tribute to the artist’s elliptical, enigmatic, and ironic use of language. Flanagan likened this expression to a boxing maneuver — a way for thought to veer unexpectedly and for art to question its own singularity.

The chronological starting point of the exhibition consists of stone carvings dating from 1973 to the mid-1980s, representing a radical departure from Flanagan’s late-1960s “soft materials” period. Rope, sacking, or projected light frames give way to these stone works, which reopen discussions around three-dimensionality and mass. The artist’s sensitivity to the specific material qualities of stone manifests in a variety of choices, from found limestone to polished Pietra verde serpentine marble. Dominated by horizontal lines, these sculptures demonstrate how the ratio of mass and weight determines the ontological presence of the object. The progression from roughly chiseled limestone pieces of 1973 to the smooth, polished marble curves of 1985 reveals Flanagan’s commitment to placing the nature of the material at the center of art rather than domesticating it.

Concurrently developed and dated between 1978 and the mid-1980s, the metal-sheet “snoot” series reflects Flanagan’s passion for mythology and fundamental geometric forms. These small, sometimes painted cut-out objects reference ancient symbolism and organic shapes through spirals, triangles, and circles. For Flanagan, the spiral form could evoke anything from an ammonite fossil to the cochlea of the ear, from a tendril to a helix structure; yet for the artist, iconography always follows materiality. His interest in Alfred Jarry’s definition of pataphysics as “the science of imaginary solutions” shapes the absurd, experimental, and playful character of these works. The yellow-painted steel piece VII 78 the corn’s up from 1978, with its upward-spiraling form, takes on an almost cultic appearance and becomes the concrete embodiment of pataphysical thought in sculpture.

The ceramic “pinch pot” series, which Flanagan concentrated on around 1992, appears in the exhibition as one of the most modest and personal expressions of his studio practice. Produced using the most basic pottery technique known since antiquity — shaped solely by thumb and finger pressure without any tools or wheel — these vessels leave the direct trace of the artist’s hand on the clay. While Flanagan declared all materials to be art, he left the imprint of the artist’s hand as a gesture based on repetition and seriality. These pots represent one of the purest examples of a hierarchy-opposing artistic manifesto in which minimalism merges with a human touch. Each twist of the artist’s hand becomes a record of time and labor imprisoned in the softness of the clay, presented to the viewer’s perception.

After his minimalist practice of the 1960s and 1970s, Flanagan’s turn toward figuration in 1979 initiated the most iconic phase of his career: the bronze hare sculptures. These biomorphic figures, which gained global fame when Flanagan represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1982, blend animal forms with anthropomorphic features. The hare — with its mythological nature, unpredictability, resurrection, and renewal symbolism — perfectly suits Flanagan’s oeuvre. Casting a creature defined by transience and speed in bronze — a material synonymous with permanence and weight — forms the fundamental paradox at the heart of the artist’s work. The monumental scale of many bronze pieces further emphasizes this contradiction by freezing the hare’s agility in the hardness of bronze.

Flanagan’s dialogue with the great masters of sculpture history constitutes one of the exhibition’s most striking layers. The 1997 work Thinker on Rock +x — an ironic reference to Rodin’s The Thinker — depicts a contemplative hare perched on a smooth rock on the gallery balcony. Similarly, the 2005 Pirate Wheel is a humorous nod to Marcel Duchamp’s first readymade, the Bicycle Wheel (1913). By casting Duchamp’s work in bronze, Flanagan turns it into an “objective copy,” preserving every detail from tire tread to production marks, then placing a hare shaped by his own hands on top. This intervention remixes the readymade concept with handmade craftsmanship (thumbprints), producing a pataphysical “imaginary solution.”

In conclusion, with the “On the other hand” exhibition, Barry Flanagan binds language, poetry, pataphysics, and art-historical references into material existence. The artist’s bending of sheet metal or pouring of bronze is both a direct act of marking and part of a historical continuum. The dualism of spirals turning both clockwise and counterclockwise represents the universal cycle in Flanagan’s art — a vast network of connections stretching from a fingerprint to a snail shell, from mineralogy to geology. Clay, stone, and rock continue to shine with their own characteristic qualities in the artist’s hands, without any new logic being imposed upon them — granting the viewer a pure perceptual encounter with the material itself.

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin: Bleibtreustraße 45

Exhibition Title: Barry Flanagan – On the other hand

Dates: Until 28 February 2026