Abstract

Works on paper can bring the viewer closer to the artist and his thinking, often providing an almost intimate insight into his work, the creative processes and approaches to motifs. This range is shown in the exhibition entitled ‘Von Anfang An (from the beginning)’. The selection of artists and their works shown here demonstrate different approaches to the medium of paper.

Works on paper are the starting point for Emma Talbot‘s paintings on silk as well as for her 3-dimensional works and animations. Talbot draws remembered images and feelings on paper every day, trying to reproduce what she has experienced as accurately as possible. Emma speaks of an unfiltered approach in which she follows her inner images without hierarchy and censorship. The resulting drawings are viewed and analysed again and again. She tracks down individual motifs in order to deepen the themes and contexts that have emerged by means of extensive research. Later, elements from these drawings could be combined into larger works and complex pictorial stories.

Jörn Stoya‘s new works called ‚Instrumentals‘ reflect connections between artistic works across centuries and a wide variety of climates and cultures. The works are based on Japanese woodcuts from the 18th century, either in the original or as an original reprint. Just like etchings by Albrecht Dürer, for example, these are unrelated, i.e. committed to the idea of dissemination. Stoya acquired the prints from an auction house in Michigan. So you‘ve come a long way, not only in terms of space, but also in terms of time. The artist has worked on these papers in his typical way with luminous and pure pigment. He sees the result as a kind of collaboration rather than an appropriation. Instrumentals are pieces of music without solo vocals or single voices, but in which different instruments can sound together.

Tomas Kleiner‘s drawings have often accompanied his large-scale installations and performative works from the very beginning. The spectrum ranges from more technical planning or construction sketches, to material collages and free structure searches. Most of them are poetically light, sometimes humorous works, which are presented in specially produced frames.

For several years now, Albrecht Schäfer has been working with the comparatively fast technique of monotype, which can be seen as the antithesis to his paintings, which are usually created over a long period of time.
Monotypes are impressions of a picture painted on one or more printing plates on a sheet of paper. How dark and with what structure a surface is printed, etc., depends on the composition of the ink, the application to the plate and its surface, the exact pressure of the roller, the printing felt, the humidity of the paper, the temperature of the room and other factors, so that the artist is always surprised by the result, although he can determine all the parameters himself. As a result, the work becomes a dialogue with the idiosyncratic material and with the sometimes very resistant, analogue printing press.

Toulu Hassani uses drawing on paper to approach her labor-intensive and time-consuming paintings and to try out decisions in advance or during the painting process. The different grids, which are also the basis of her paintings, are tested on paper, as well as changes of direction, dissolution of the grid and ‘disturbances’ of other kinds. In rarer cases, as in the case of the works entitled above horizon (excerpt), these are works on paper that have been derived from existing works.

Lothar Götz always works on paper. Drawing with pencil and crayon is part of his daily work in the studio. In this exhibition, studies/drafts of space-related works in private and public space are shown for the first time. In 3 showcases, realized designs will be shown, but also discarded intermediate steps and projects that were not brought to realization.

These are unusual motifs that Jakob Forster puts on paper with colored pencil. For example, the works of the anti-aging series blister packs show how they are used for chocolate and pralines. Like a series of paintings depicting the shape and pattern of paper cups used every day for drinking on the street, these are also vessels. The artist says: ‘The works in the Anti-Aging series address the storage of value of artistic work in the material in response to (the experience of) energy loss through (wage) work and the associated compensation with and dependence on coffee and chocolate.’

Ralf Brög’s abrasive drawings are an independent, relatively new group of works, which, like his other groups of works, have a conceptual approach. The medium used is traditional oil paint, the base is sandpaper or abrasive cloth. The range of sandpapers owes their colourfulness to the natural or synthetic grain materials used. The size of the sheet format (230 x 280 mm) is also specified. So that it can be said that the specific material properties of the image carrier become specific qualities of the series.
When Brög speaks of drawing and not of painting, it could have something to do with the fact that what is depicted is to be read as sculptural or object-oriented ideas in a still undefined environment. At the same time, the monochrome abrasive space acts as a reference to concrete, materialized space in contrast to the illusionistic pictorial space of painting.

Johannes Bendzulla’s pictorial objects and works on paper raise the question of whether the motif is really real, for example a sheet of paper, or whether it is a perfectly printed representation of a paper structure?
The artist is particularly interested in the interweaving of basic analogue media with digital image strategies. Above all, drawing and painting are important. Canvas and paint, paper and pencil, the conventions of the panel painting and the framed sheet – all this forms his basic vocabulary, which is then alienated with “impossible” or “unrealistic” digital interventions. In this way, he blurs the boundaries between analogue and computer-generated, mathematical image aesthetics. Bendzulla also frequently uses trompe l’oeil-based strategies, because playing with the “deception” and “disappointment” of the viewer touches on fundamental questions of the perception of the world.