On 3 June 2026, Hans Heiner Buhr opens his exhibition From Darkness to Light at Vernissage Gallery in Tbilisi. The show brings together new and recent paintings that trace an arc between dark and light, between origin and present, between the expressive mark and the digital image.
Alongside the paintings, the catalogue In the Prison of Art will be presented to the public for the first time — a comprehensive survey of Hans Heiner Buhr’s work across several decades, setting his pictorial thinking in relation to his biography.
Between Borderland and Steppe
Buhr grew up in the shadow of Checkpoint Charlie — a child of the GDR who became a soldier in the NVA before a chance encounter (a Van Gogh book in an empty Sunday library) set him on a different course. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, lived in Berlin and Samarkand, and moved to Tbilisi in 1996 — initially for a teaching post, then permanently.
What connects his paintings is this double border: between East and West, between order and rupture, between the weight of a European inheritance and the freedom of the Caucasian steppe. Riders appear again and again — figures of movement, of withdrawal, of liberty without programme. The Shiraki steppe, Tusheti, the Georgian high mountains are not backdrops in his work. They are states of mind.
In the internet of the 2000s, Buhr found connection to an international art scene, minting works on SuperRare, Objkt, and Foundation long before such activity had a mainstream name. For him, the digital is no contradiction of the analogue — it is an extension of it into cyberspace: one more borderland to inhabit.
Artist Statement
“The adventures in the steppes and deep mountains of the Caucasus have always fascinated me. The spirit and esprit of Georgian intellectuals, the wit of Kakhetian winemakers, the temperament of the Khevsurs, and the beauty of Georgian women — a constant whirlpool of my senses and emotions. The internet of the 2000s connected us artists internationally. Shabby geopolitics, wars, financial crises, pandemics, and catastrophes of all kinds lurk at every turn and disrupt the harmony I seek in my art. My paintings carry something raw, hard, brutal — but also poetry. I continue to search for ways to transform my German roots and my life in Georgia into a compelling pictorial cosmos through new analog and digital images.”
— Hans Heiner Buhr
The Catalogue
The title is both confession and nostalgia, based on a poem. Art as prison — or as the only place that is truly free? The catalogue assembles works from several decades and will be available for the first time at the opening. The cover shows a monumental expressionist figure — armoured, loaded, pressing forward through planes of raw colour. Not a hero. A person inside the system.
In the Prison of Art
In the prison of art,
In the ivory tower.
The Sassanids pass in the distance.
Helis and Stukas do not notice us
In the lonely fortress of beauty.
Scraps of words from unknown tongues
Are blown from the Caucasus by the wind,
Into the ears and the eyebags of dreams and intuition.
At the center of conflicting energies,
Magnetic pole fields tug at the substance.
Feet and bones burn
Within the sacred limits of pure art,
Where even the lemon trees wither
And radioactivity dominates the ideal of divided creation.
What is a lie here and what is the truth remains unclear.
And yet, there are great bear faces here,
And fresh paw prints in the snow by the forest edge.
Here are Khikhvi vineyards, wagtails, and steppe rollers.
Every new crisis tears down the concrete locks
Built by bad architects and poor planners—cement B37 Blue.
Jays and ravens chase one another.
Thoughts, poems, sketches, doubts.
Colors.
Gallantry.
Silence.
2022
Exhibition Details
Opening: 3 June 2026, 5 pm Dates: 3 – 17 June 2026 Venue: Vernissage Gallery, 36 Shota Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilisi 0105, Georgia Catalogue: In the Prison of Art — available at the exhibition Available Works: vernissagegallery.org Contact: vernissage27@gmail.com · +995 551 22 05 26
Browse all available works at vernissagegallery.org/artists/hans-heiner-buhr