Haptic Memory (November 8 – December 24, 2022) at Capsule, featuring seventeen new mixed-media paintings, marks artist Mevlana Lipp’s first solo exhibition in Asia.
Lipp’s paintings conjure James Cameron’s film Avatar, particularly the Tree of Souls–a profound symbol that embodies the Na’vi people’s spirits and memories. Through an ineffable resemblance, the vegetal forms in Lipp’s work pulse with flowing emotions and shifting moods. At the same time, a tangible form of “haptic memory” bridges the spiritual realms inside and outside the pictorial space.
Raised in a small village in Germany surrounded by nature, Lipp spent much of his childhood wandering forests. From these early encounters grew a lasting fascination with natural diversity. He believes that an artist’s sensitivity to reality—and the forms through which it is expressed—originates in an inner truth. Consequently, his paintings translate perception and imagination of the natural world into living images: curling vines that gently caress the seeds (Cosmos, 2022), interlacing leaves overflowing with energy and poised at a threshold (Momentum, 2022), and stamens swaying in an upward surge of growth (Pond, 2022).
Inside the gallery, Lipp constructs an emotional jungle shaped by his imagination of the natural world. Outside, Capsule’s garden, specially arranged for the exhibition, is an extension of the artist’s subjective perception of the real world.
The exhibition opens with Genesis (2022). From the upper right corner of the painting, a soft, tentacle-like form reaches toward the stamen of a green lily in bloom—an allusion to the origin of life itself. Lipp does not paint “plants” in any conventional sense; instead, his subjects appear as sentient beings. In Trinity (2022), for example, a composition infused with religious resonance presents a form that is neither plant nor animal, but something suspended between states—transforming from a primordial condition toward awareness.
At the center of the room to the left of the entrance, Venus (2022) quietly echoes Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1485) in both structure and symbolism. A flawless pearl occupies the center of the composition, embodying Venus herself, while the symmetry of the image lends it a ritualistic sense of gravitas. In the room to the right, this same composition reappears in Shell (2022), Fane (2022), and Omen (2022), creating a contemplative sense of balance.
Across the exhibition, Lipp’s works reveal a cohesive technique and a highly recognizable visual language. The layered juxtaposition of diverse materials and the use of fluorescent gradients are hallmarks of Lipp’s visual language. The light-absorbing indigo velvet backgrounds open up a sense of infinite depth, and place the subject in the foreground in a suspended, almost weightless state, enhancing the paintings’ mysterious and surreal qualities. Fluorescent hues, softened through color gradation, temper visual tension and create a silent dialogue among these beings—an exchange that unfolds without words.
All the works on view are realized through a consistent process: machine-cut, organically shaped wooden panels mounted onto velvet backgrounds. This consistency lends the exhibition a shared material rhythm and a sense of craft. Though rational and standardized, the method does not undermine the works’ affective charge; instead, its repetition becomes part of the exhibition’s quiet pulse. While this rational, standardized method does not undermine the emotional tenor of the images, its persistent recurrence may, over time, register as visually demanding.
Through these imagined emotional jungles, Lipp seeks to bind nature and spirituality into a single experiential field. Fear and unease coexist with desire and restraint; introversion gives way to moments of outward intensity. Yet the artist resists anchoring these emotions into defined meanings. By leaving them unassigned, he dissolves distinctions of identity—between groups, cultures, and genders—and gestures toward a nonverbal communication of emotions: raw, primal and instinctive. – [O]
