His first solo exhibition was in 1981 in St. Gallen.[2] In the 1990s, he sometimes exhibited alongside artist Silvia Bächli, whom he married.[5][2] He later collaborated in exhibitions with artist Werner Reiterer.
Artwork
Hattan departs from concrete objects and spaces. He questions places, architectures and situations of all-day-life through breaking regularities and subversing the assumed stasis of the world with playful irony. The rearrangement of clothing, furniture, pedestals or monitors plays a decisive role in his oeuvre, even became independent and exposes given situations to unbiased observation. Hattan directs his gaze on processes and incidents in the urban space through his video camera. During expeditions through cities and their peripheries he discovers a potential of plastic forms, which complete, comment or permeate his installative works since the 1990s. The phenomenological exploration of daily processes and random movements leads him often to construction sites. Not yet or not anymore used zones, property just before demolition or during a building freeze, waste land and nowhere land, lay bare sculptural qualities, which challenge the artist to different insights. Hattan's usually temporary projects in public space are evidence of an interest in inverting the view on the familiar.
Hattan's artistic career developed parallel to his early engagement for a young scene of artists, with whom he realized many exhibitions and performances in the self-organized Basel project space Filiale during the 1980s and 1990s.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
2000/01: Beton liquide, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau / MAMCO musée d'art moderne et contomporain, Genève
2013: Les Pleiades 30 ans des FRAC, FRAC Midi-Pyrénées à Toulouse
Publications
Beton liquide: Eric Hattan - Video, ed. by Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau and Lars Müller Publishers, Red. Stephan Kunz, incl. a text by Kathrin Becker (ger./fr./engl.), Baden: Lars Müller, 2000. ISBN3-907078-29-2
Ideeavoir: Eric Hattan, ed. by Sabine Schaschl-Cooper, Muttenz/Basel: Kunsthaus Baselland, 2003. ISBN3-906539-12-1
Eric Hattan: Niemand ist mehr da - Vous êtes chez moi, incl. a text by Maja Naef and Ralph Ubl (ger./fr./engl.) and a DVD, Berlin: Holzwarth Publications, 2006. ISBN978-3-935567-32-9
Silvia Bächli, Eric Hattan: Schnee bis im Mai, ed. by Kunsthalle Nürnberg, with texts by Raphaële Jeune, Michael Semff and Harriet Zilch (ger./engl.), Köln: Snoeck, 2011. ISBN978-3-940953-77-3