“Hans tells his own story while capturing the spirit of our continuous journey between the digital and the analogue. His inspiration begins with a place, memory or conceptual idea which is often manifested immediately en-plein air using Snapchat on his smartphone- if the battery holds up. The (trivial) end-consumer software is misappropriated and instead of fleeting selfies or nudes, digital assemblages, paintings or drawings are created. For his partially cryptic musings he uses his own set of codes made up of personal symbols, signs and lyrics, but also toys with the universal language of emoji inherently baked into digital native communication. Fragments of texts in its meaning and form may link to a very personal experience, while at the same time it might resemble a banal memo as commonly seen on social media. A contrast between blurred elements and sharp lines or edges on the surface create aesthetic, compositional structures, but also represent the human thought process or a truth-seeking mechanism in the pixels. Additionally, stark lines to childlike scribbles are juxtaposed with fragments of blurred photographs, distorted emoji and faded texts providing hints of a reference and stimulating thought. A group of works from 2019 shown the same year at Gosu in Frankfurt, Germany, are printed behind 4 mm glass and on aluminium panels which are attached to, pierced by, hanging on various velvet ropes, a rosary or construction site chains creating mind and space-filling sculptures.

Through his play of codes and references, words and emoji, scribbles and objects Hans Schnapp develops his own visual language and aesthetic, which expands into installations, photo- and videography. Formally not bound by media or materiality, he constantly relates between different places and harmonizes the personal and impersonal. His artistic practice can thus also be characterized as translation, appropriation and recycling of experienced reality.”
Rebecca S. Kumar