Hans-Peter (Bara) Thomas
Hans-Peter Thomas aka Bara (b. 1968, Bonn, Germany) is an artist whose work moves between painting, music, performance, and installation. Over the past two decades he has developed a practice that interrogates the act of mark-making and authorship, beginning with early alphabet paintings (2003) and extending into monochrome canvases inscribed with scratches and cuts that probe the limits of painting’s surface. Working also under the pseudonym Bara, Thomas has produced music, collaborative performances, and experimental objects that explore identity through layered gestures of inscription and erasure.
His more recent steel etching works extend this inquiry into the language of line and symbol, drawing on sources such as Renaissance diagrams, Kabbalistic drawings, and Rudolf Steiner’s models of energy flows. Referencing the Voyager Golden Record, these wall-based works suggest both mystic diagrams and cryptic transmissions to future or extraterrestrial audiences, oscillating between the universal and the private.
Thomas’s work has been exhibited internationally, with solo shows at Salt Studios, Los Angeles (2025); Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck (2024, 2023, 2013, 2007); Paul Soto, Los Angeles (2023); and Galerie Ben Kaufmann, Berlin (2011, 2006, 2005). Group exhibitions include Transzendenz Inc. at Autocenter, Berlin (2010); Pop-Auge at Patrick Painter Inc., Los Angeles (2008); and La Boum II at Galerie Sies & Höke, Düsseldorf (2006).
He studied at the Art Academy of Munich (1991–97) and was awarded the DAAD scholarship in Rotterdam (1999) and the MAK Schindler Scholarship in Los Angeles (2009). Thomas lives and works in Los Angeles and Berlin.
EDUCATION
1997
Academy of Fine Arts
Munich, Germany
JURY
Xenia Kalpaktsoglou
Andrea Lenardin Madden
Gerhard Johann Lischka
Erwin Wurm
Peter Noever
FINAL PROJECT
