As an ongoing series ‘Bonsai’, taking up the fleeting, even spontaneous of the plein air and watercolour painting besides a kind of entanglement with Asian painting traditions, various small-formats have been increasingly emerging in recent years in Philipp Haager’s work – starting first with very small paper pieces.

These borrow from Asian painting traditions while addressing the fleeting and spontaneous qualities of plein-air and watercolour painting. In one sense they serve as sketches, like seedlings or cuttings that will grow into larger pictures or later be translated into a larger format, but at the same time they are also miniatures representing large paintings that already exist.