Sebastian Haas: “My process is structured by reversal. Because I paint on the back of glass, I do not fully see the image while producing it; it resolves only once the pane is turned. That delay prevents excessive control and leaves room for fracture, immediacy, and unpredictability.”
How and why did you start your artistic career?
I would not describe it as a single decision. Art gradually became the form through which I think, test images, and remain in relation to the world. What began early as an intuitive act of making developed, through sustained practice and study, into a binding artistic position.
How did you discover your medium and why did you choose it?
My engagement with glass emerged through experimentation and became increasingly deliberate. I was interested in a support that resists the conventions of canvas and fundamentally alters the condition of painting.
Glass does not absorb paint; it holds it on the surface, activates reflection, and places the image in direct relation to light, space, and the viewer. In reverse glass painting, the work never appears as a closed image, but as something contingent, relational, and unstable.
Sebastian Haas, “Untitled” series;
Oil, spraypaint on reverse glass, framed;
24 x 30 cm
2024
Courtesy of the Artist and KALI Gallery
Photo by Kim da Motta
Can you tell us about your creative process? How does your work come to life? How long does it take you to create a piece? When do you know it is finished?
My process is structured by reversal. Because I paint on the back of glass, I do not fully see the image while producing it; it resolves only once the pane is turned. That delay prevents excessive control and leaves room for fracture, immediacy, and unpredictability.
Many works begin with AI-generated image material, which I translate through scratching, layering, reduction, and tactile intervention.
The duration varies, but the medium is exacting, since correction is difficult and often means beginning again. A work is finished when the surface has reached its internal resolution and any further intervention would push it towards illustration.
Sebastian Haas, “Untitled”;
Oil, spraypaint on reverse curved glass, framed;
110 x 18 cm
2023
Photo by Gepäckausgabe
Courtesy of the Artist and KALI Gallery
Who are your favorite artists? Which ones are you inspired by?
Giorgio de Chirico is a key reference for me, especially in the way his metaphysical painting constructs theatrical, psychologically charged spaces through architecture, objects, and estrangement.
Byung-Chul Han is equally important as a philosophical reference, particularly his analysis of exhaustion, transparency, and self-exposure in contemporary image culture.
If my work were to be situated within a broader constellation, Kurt Schwitters would matter for his logic of assemblage and Isa Genzken for her radical articulation of architecture, surface, fragmentation, and display.
THE ARTIST
Credits KALI Gallery
Name: Sebastian Haas
Residence: Bern (Switzerland)
FEATURED WORKS
Sebastian Haas, “Here, briefly”;
Oil, spraypaint on reverse glass, framed;
18 x 13 cm
2025
Courtesy of the Artist and KALI Gallery
Photo by Kim da Motta
Sebastian Haas, “Soon enough, in silence”;
Oil, spraypaint on reverse glass, framed;
40 x 30 cm
2025
Courtesy of the Artist and KALI Gallery
Photo by Kim da Motta
Sebastian Haas, “Notihing happens here – all in good time”;
Oil, spraypaint on reverse glass, framed;
24 x 30 cm
2024
Courtesy of the Artist and KALI Gallery
Photo by Kim da Motta
FEATURED WORKS
Sebastian Haas, “Untitled”;
Oil, spraypaint on reverse glass, framed;
30 x 40 cm
2024
Courtesy of the Artist and KALI Gallery
Photo by Kim da Motta
Sebastian Haas, “Notihing happens here – all in good time”;
Oil, spraypaint on reverse glass, framed;
24 x 30 cm
2024
Courtesy of the Artist and KALI Gallery
Photo by Kim da Motta
Sebastian Haas, “Small hours”;
Oil, spraypaint on reverse glass, framed;
18 x 13 cm
2025
Courtesy of the Artist and KALI Gallery
Photo by Kim da Motta
Bio
Sebastian Haas (b. 1992, Bern, CH) lives and works in Bern, where he has maintained his studio since 2021.
He studied at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Design & Art, earning his BA in 2018 and his MA in 2021. He received the BEWE Foundation Basel Award on completion of his BA and the Max von Moos Foundation Prize on completion of his MA.
His work has been presented at Kunsthalle Basel, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Vitromusée Romont, Kunsthalle Luzern, and Kunsthalle Bern, and is held in public collections including the Helvetia Collection, the Canton of Bern Collection, and the Vitromusée Romont Collection. Since 2021, he has been represented by KALI Gallery, Lucerne.
Shaped by the specific material and visual culture of his region, Haas approaches glass as an interface between landscape, body, and digital culture. In his practice, it becomes a medium through which material presence, reflection, and perception enter into dynamic relation.