The earliest works in the exhibition Vertauschte Köpfe (Transposed Heads) by brothers Andreas and Konrad Mühe reflect how they deal with the death of their father, Ulrich Mühe, in 2007. Just one year later, Konrad Mühe starts to watch films with Ulrich Mühe in the leading role and to select sequences, which – with a new plot – produce a conversation that has never previously been conducted in this way about the relationship between father and son. Although the title Fragen an meinen Vater (Questions to My Father) suggests a dialogue, we hear only his answers. But is it the father giving them, or the actor in the roles he plays?
In his photographs entitled Februar 2007, es geht nicht mehr weiter (February 2007, There’s Nothing More We Can Do), Andreas Mühe reconstructs the exact situation in which he found out that there was no prospect of recovery for his father and that his life would soon come to an end.

The start of the exhibition on the 1^st floor forms a prologue of portraits by Andreas and Konrad Mühe; this picks up on the title of Hängung #24 at KUNSTWERK, Vertauschte Köpfe (Transposed Heads), borrowed from a story by Thomas Mann. The consideration of own identity and the medium of photography in its temporal conditionality is reflected in the 24-part ensemble Mühe-Kopf (Mühe-Head) by Andreas Mühe. At the same time, in the photograph Oskar I, he makes historical, biographical reference – which is also essential for the concept of the exhibition – to his grandfather, Oskar Hahn, who moved with his parents from Kornwestheim to Uckermark in 1937.

The video projectors moulded in wax in the Tome series by Konrad Mühe are another form of portrait. Reminiscent of death masks or an ancestral gallery, they refer here to the subjective projection contained in each narrative. His video sculpture Ava looks like a kneeling child, gazing with fascination into the play of light in a chandelier. Switched on and off in various phases, its flashes outshine the coloured images projected by Ava. An interaction emerges between the projected being and the old lamps that appear to have fallen from the ceiling: a dialogue develops between one’s own internal being and the external being of others, which is the basis of any identity formation.

Inspired by the tradition of middle-class family portraits, representing finely coded relationship structures in the grouping of the subjects, Andreas Mühe devoted himself to his major project, Mischpoche (Tribe), from 2016 to 2019. Both of the largescale tableaus, of the families on his father’s and his mother’s side, are at the centre of the front section on the 2^nd floor. Produced in complex processes, each comprising four generations, the artist inserts lifelike figures of those who have already died. Corresponding to the current age of the artist, they are likewise each represented at the age of almost 40. Although the deceased in the family appear to be brought to life, the detailed set orchestration of the people and staging emphasises the nature of the images as an artistic construction.

Konrad Mühe’s video sculptures examine existential questions concerning the perception and impact of images and the construction of identity. Johannes offers a narcissistic human image, which alternates between self-reflection and the perception of an engineered ego. Although the video sculptures represent technoid objects and comprise furniture such as tables, cupboards and shelves as well as projectors, they immediately create the impression of living beings, and this is further emphasised by the artist’s titling of the works. Here, our animist tendency to attribute human characteristics or features to inanimate things, reacts to the shape patterns stored in our minds. In respect of Konrad Mühe’s video sculptures, these routines of perception create a personal basis of analysis, the content of which is deepened respectively in the combination of form, surface structure and film projection.

Whilst the works on either side of the family portrait on his mother’s side concentrate on the history of the Hahn family, the high hall area opposite the tableau Mühe II (groß) features pieces by Andreas Mühe, which focus on the picture of his father, Ulrich Mühe. The torso, which looks like an ancient kouros appears – installed at an elevated point in the room – unattainable and to a certain extent idealised, whereas the impressive portrait of his father is presented covertly behind an exhibition wall. The father image that this creates and the deconstruction of the same result in an evocative area of tension.

In the video installation Weissglas (White Glass), we see Konrad Mühe himself, how he moves between the different levels of wall and floor. However, normal physical laws seem to have been suspended. The familiar concept of space is countered in a deceptive tease that is both confusing and fascinating.

Andy Denzler

These works are portraits or representations of people in an indefinite setting or surrounded by landscape. You see them in action, remaining in movement, captured in snapshots. In his pictorial rendering of the motifs, Andy Denzler initially follows a concept characterised by the realistic but then takes the characteristic and crucial step for his work: creating horizontal tracks in the top layer of the still wet oil paint, as if he were blotting out anything accidental from the present, elevating the image to another, abstract level of time and reality.

Spandita Malik

Born in India in 1995, living in New York

The women are not allowed to leave the house. They remain trapped at home by their husbands or fathers. Or fear compels them to live in isolation in their rooms – fear of violent attacks, just because they are women in India. They earn a small income from traditional embroidery, for which their villages in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab are renowned.
Artist Spandita Malik (*1995), who comes from India and lives in New York, visited the women. The project to create a documentary series of photographs evolved into a collaborative project. Spandita Malik had the captured portraits printed on a fabric that is typical of the region and give them back to the women with a request to embroider them according to their own ideas. The series of works is entitled Nā́rī, which is Sanskrit for “woman” or which can equally denote a female object or mean “sacrifice”.

David Schnell

Born in Bergisch Gladbach in 1971, living in Leipzig

The landscape appears to be free of gravity in the real world. Its light overwhelms in brilliant yellow and azure blue; elsewhere it is soft, in gentle pastel tones. Artist David Schnell, who lives in Leipzig, breaks apart all the fixed elements that exist in a landscape. In his painting, architectural and plant fragments, geometric areas and abstract structures – underpinned by a perspective framework – create exceptionally dynamic artistic forces.

Günther Uecker

Born in Wendorf in 1930, living in Düsseldorf and St. Gallen

Does Günther Uecker’s “Spiral” bring to mind turning outward or turning inward? Is the power of the imaginary movement condensed in the middle or is that the point at which it gains its initial impulse to spread to the periphery? The shape of the spiral is recognisable even in the light base coat of the nail relief. With the carpenter’s nails that the artist drives into the board, the swirl gains a physically tangible presence. Above the metal shafts, the heads of the nails are coloured in white, so that the dynamic events also still themselves. The ambivalent interpretation of the artistic structure resonates in the harmony of stillness and movement.

Anna Krammig

Born in Heidelberg in 1981, living in Zürich

By nature, the shadows that loom on the building walls are fleeting and incorporeal. The traces of the objective on the bright surface are transient, as their representation will immediately change when the sun moves on. In her paintings, with the ephemeral play of light and shadow, artist Anna Krammig captures the exceptional in instants and locations that are, in themselves, unspectacular. At the same time, her fine painting, applied in glazes, gives a shimmer to what is depicted, carrying away viewers’ thoughts and connecting them with timeless internal images.

What do we remember, Marie Zbikowska asks, when we recall the perception of spaces, of structural circumstances from memory? The fragmentary nature of memory is reflected in her work process, as she starts by simulatively reconstructing an essence of something originally seen and in the next step allows the new construction to become the photographic subject. The submergence of remembered information, which is associated with its storage, leads to tackling of the aspect of archiving and the thematic examination of so-called time capsules, such as are also used in foundation stone laying ceremonies.

Faceless portraits. Avatars. Empty bodies. The protagonists in the photographs of Louisa Clement are artificial beings, absolved of any identity. In the artist’s works, shop window dummies serve as stand-ins for people. The photographs – which at first glance appear visionary, fictional – paint a disconcerting picture of our present life. In anonymous encounters and in the unrelated togetherness of the figures, they raise the question of whether our concept of humanitarian belongs to the present or to the past.

Following the tradition of appropriation art, Sabrina Jung uses previously reproduced images in her art: external materials with different temporal and medial contextuality. She creates collages of cut-out faces from current fashion magazines pasted onto photographic portraits of women from the 1920s to the 1960s. Whilst changed ideals of beauty come together in Schöne Frauen (Beautiful women), the artist addresses aspects of gender identity in the WoMen series. She uses feminine make-up to paint over historic portraits of women with androgynous-masculine features.

In 2015 after the death of her father, Isabelle Graeff returned to Great Britain, where she had studied. From London, she once again grew closer to the country. The photographic series Exit emerges from this: emotional, poetic pictures that reflect the state of a nation shortly before the Brexit decision. As a long-term project, her My Mother and I series has been ongoing for almost twenty years and paints a picture of the relationship between mother and daughter.

Andrea Grützner’s Erbgericht series is named after the place from which it originates. The inn (named “Erbgericht”) that has operated in her family’s home town for over 100 years is documented as a place of many memories. Yet, “the physical structure of the space volunteers nothing about itself; it is our projections that give it colour,” the artist says. Using analogue technology she cross-fades selected sections of spaces with coloured shadows. In so doing, she transcends the perceived reality of the place, sometimes to the point of its complete translation into a pictorial/graphical image.

The abstract, relief-like photographic subjects of Christiane Feser are initially based on elements made of folded paper, which the artist produces, assembles into modular structures and then – using light and shade to give depth to the image space – photographs. The two-dimensional photographic copy of the three-dimensional structure is sculpturally remodelled by cutting and folding. Here, the photographic image inscribes itself into the object and makes its examination a game of deception between surface and space.

Mårten Lange – fascinated since his childhood by the lost world of the dinosaurs – travels to Mexico and visits the Chicxulub crater, where the asteroid struck, which ended the life of the prehistoric creatures. The pictures of creatures and landscapes in a perceived situation, retracing the long lost, are in stark contrast to The Mechanism, a group of works with pictures of a contemporary, urban world marked by an impersonal social coldness.

The self-portrait is a key topic in the art of Morgaine Schäfer. She presents herself in poses that appear antiquated, which originate from the iconographic tradition of the subject and therefore relate to one another in a way that is almost anachronistic to “posing” for digital selfies. In her work, considerable significance is attributed to old mounted slides of family snapshots: like the material attributes in historic portrait painting, they appear as references to personal identity.

Jewgeni Roppel looks at the past and present of Ireland in his piece entitled Mothar. On his journey through the country, he asks which places, which buildings, which topographical features, which myths and evidence from historic times and which phenomena of the present day shape its identity. Building on Aby Warburg’s atlas of images, Mnemosyne, he chronicles the cultural self-concept of the country through his photographs in a way that is both illustrative and associative.

According to Australian mythology, the world as we know it was formed in a time when creative beings roamed the continent and on their way gave rise to land and water, the diverse flora, fauna and human world and to all elementary manifestations. The rules and principles that determine the life of the Aborigines to the present day can be traced back to them.

The English term “Dreaming”, which indeed suggests a finished period, can offer only a limited interpretation of what is described by the terms Tjukurrpa in the language of the Pitjantjatjara in Central Australia or Wangarr in the languages of Northeast Arnhem Land. This is because it also ends the wanderings of the creative ancestors but Tjukurrpa or Wangarr continues, incorporating past, present and future.

The creator ancestors remain ever-present and visible in the widest variety of formations of nature, celebrated by the people of the land in stories, in songs and in ceremonies. The traditions connect the people with the place of their birth, transferring to the living the responsibility for the welfare of the respective land and the community living on it.

The start of the exhibition is dedicated to artists’ cooperative “Papunya Tula Artists”, which was founded in 1972 at the government settlement of Papunya, 240 km northwest of Alice Springs. This is where the contemporary painting movement of the Aborigines in Central Australia begins.

The paintings reflect pictorial elements that have previously been drawn only in transient form in secret ceremonies in the desert sand or applied to the body. They relate to specific places and mythical stories that are associated with them, which chronicle wanderings of the creator ancestors and their works. However, the secret content is protected from disclosure by shimmering patterns of dots or lines.

Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri was one of the first members of the “Papunya Tula Artists”. Early on, he experimented with dotted fields of colour and linear structures. Kanya Tjapangati has worked for the artists’ cooperative since the 1980s; the circular shapes in his picture refer to a place where creator ancestors have stayed. Paintings that are executed very subtly in colourfulness and structure are by Yukultji Napangati and Doreen Reid Nakamarra, who rank amongst the most successful members of the arts centre in the younger generation.

After political recognition of the land rights of Aborigines, many indigenous people moved back to their ancestral territories in the course of the homeland movement in the 1980s. Whereas the “Papunya Tula Artists” shifted their focus to Kintore and Kiwirrkurra, a new group formed in Papunya itself in 2007. From the “Papunya Tupi Arts” group, the exhibition displays a painting by Doris Bush Nungarrayi.

On level 2, the focus turns to Arnhem Land. The artistic tradition of the region is characterised by bark panels or wooden objects painted with natural dyes such as ochre, charcoal, chalk or white pipe clay. The materials come from the land, which is shaped by the tropical climate of the north with its rocky areas, forests, rivers and the coast by the sea. Here, rock paintings that are up to 18,000 years old attest the long history of ritual-related art in Australia. Its motifs and pictorial structures, which are newer but nonetheless several thousand years old, are still reflected in contemporary works.

Which stories from mythological tradition and which abstract patterns can be painted depends on affiliation to a clan and to one of the two hereditary lines (moieties), Dhuwa or Yirritja. It was left to artist Mickey Durrng from Central Arnhem Land to paint the clan patterns of the Liyagawumirr, which are applied including to the bodies of the dead during death rituals.

In turn, paintings on level 3 are presented in stark contrast. With them, the focus turns once again to Central Australia. Based on the model of “Papunya Tula Artists”, artists’ cooperatives have been established in other regions. As such, Aborigines from the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra language groups are also continuing the painting movement in their ancestral territories on the territorial borders of South and Western Australia. As demonstrated especially in paintings by Yaritji Young, Imitjala Curley from the APY Lands and Esther Giles from the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, they offer very different emphases here with their strong colours and expressive painting styles.

In January, the presentation on level 3 is changing. A special exhibition by ARTKELCH Gallery is dedicated to the use of black and white in the indigenous art of Papua New Guinea and Australia. The focus here is on pieces by three artists’ cooperatives. Characteristic of the Oemi artists from Papua New Guinea are bark bast cloths in contrasting patterns, which originate from the creation story of the tribe and can be executed only by female chieftains. Here, naturally coloured pieces or strips are applied to materials dyed in river mud (or conversely dark pieces on a light background).

Essentially, black in the art of the Aborigines often represents the substantial, the material core of a creation story; white is regarded more as a spherical, spiritual colour. However, the extent of the difference in justification of the application of both the achromatic colours is demonstrated by the other two sections of the special exhibition. Paintings from East Arnhem Land in the north of Australia on wood, tree bark or paper – from Buku-Larrnggay Mulka art centre – follow a regional tradition, concentrating on white clay and chalk as well as black earth pigments as natural colours. By contrast, the acrylic paintings of the Central Australian Papunya Tjupi Arts centre are still governed by an impulse from the period when the cooperative was established, when reduction of the colour pallet was a result of the economic situation.

The particular interest of Alison and Peter W. Klein in the Polynesian bark cloths has doubtless emerged through their longstanding examination of sculptures by the Aborigines and, as with these sculptures, is accompanied by a personal fascination. Nonetheless, it was not a direct path leading from Australia to the Polynesian Islands and the tapa cloths; rather, their attention was initially drawn to Maori material culture in New Zealand, expressed mainly in carved and painted decoration on buildings or practical objects as well as in body tattoos. In Rotorua, southeast of Auckland on the North Island of New Zealand, they found a contemporary installation in the Maori Arts and Crafts Institute, in which traditional handicrafts still continue today. This was also where they made contact with master carver James Rickard, whom they commissioned to produce a sculpture. It was designed by Rickard as a traditional memorial column and combined with aspects of German history.

Meanwhile, the expectation of the collector couple of finding paintings with pictorial reflections of the traditional culture of the country in New Zealand in the same way as in Australia led them not to traditional artefacts but rather to contemporary works in the visual arts.

Darryn George (*1970) was born in Christchurch in New Zealand and belongs to the Maori Napuhi tribe. In his academic training, he devoted himself to the western abstract painting tradition. Only as his studies progressed did he conceptually incorporate his bicultural identity into his work. Since 2003, he has exhibited paintings in which he combines abstract painting as well as artistic and linguistic elements of Maori culture.

John Pule (*1962) was born on the Polynesian island of Niue and came to Auckland in New Zealand as a child with his parents. He is a writer and visual artist. His literary works, which have been in production since the 1980s, reflect the experience of migration and foreignness in a new country. His first visit to the home island of Niue in 1991 is followed by an intensive examination of its spiritual and material culture, in which the bark bast cloths provide a major incentive for formulation of his own visual language.

Samoa and Tonga, where the bark bast cloths are still produced today for special private and official occasions and where they form an important part of the cultural identity, are the origin of exhibits with bold patterns accentuated by overpainting. On Samoa, the bark bast cloths are referred to as siapo, as soap elei when decorated on the basis of templates, and as soap mamanu when painted by hand. Grid structures are characteristic of both design forms.
From ancient times, the bark cloths became especially important on Samoa as bartering objects and as objects of value on the occasion of births, marriages and deaths as well as at when chieftain titles were awarded. To this day, they are considered to be a distinctive gift for special guests or for family members who live abroad and they are essential at official and private occasions.

On the islands of the Tonga archipelago, the tapa cloths are coloured predominantly using pattern boards or stencils. Here, the bark bast cloths have been stretched over the raised bar and the colour has been applied with impregnated cloths. In the further processing, specific aspects of the pattern have been accentuated or additional elements introduced. Tonga is the only region in the world where historic events have influenced the design of bark cloths. As such, Spitfire representations on a textile fragment from Sammlung Klein are reminiscent of the aeroplanes that the Tongan queen acquired to support the English in the Second World War. Today, bark bast cloths are no longer significant in everyday use on Tonga. However, as objects of value, they are still produced in large numbers and certainly for stock.

Tapa art on Niue is documented only between 1865 and 1900. Patterned tapa fabrics probably first came to the island with Samoan missionaries. The first discrete patterns are known from tapaponchos, which are cut on the basis of the Tahitian model.
The bark bast cloths from Niue were painted exclusively by hand, initially with free compositions. Since the 1880s and possibly under the influence of a local painting school, image structures have developed on the basis of grids. The significance of these works in the local cultural context remains unclear. Production of bark cloths was discontinued on Niue as early as in 1900. However, they have survived in museums and collections and remain an inspiration to descendants to this day.

On the Fiji Islands, the bark cloths – known here as masi – had many uses. They were used by men as loincloths or turbans. Oiled and smoked, they were the sign of a chieftain. They served as mosquito protection but also as flags to adorn people or weapons in dance, war and festivals, or as a medium of exchange within Fiji society to seal relationships between chiefdoms.
Relationships that have existed for centuries between the individual Fiji Islands, Tonga and Samoa have influenced the local tapa traditions. Stencils cut out of leaves were used for the design of patterned cloths. These generally helped to create serial decorations, which were combined with strips or abstract natural forms.
On Fiji too, the importance of tapa production has declined. However, there are still occasions today when large quantities of the fabric are presented.

The residents of Futuna and neighbouring island Alofi speak a language that is closely related to Samoan and also refer to bark bast cloths as siapo. It is therefore no surprise that some of their tapa production also follows the Samoan model: cloths produced jointly by two or more women and glued together are printed with templates and then painted by hand. For use as a dance apron – to this day the clear distinguishing feature of traditional dance groups – a lower horizontal strip remained unprinted and was designed freehand. The whole characteristic style of the decorations used here is in clear contrast with the overpainting of the preprinted cloth with bold lines.
In other patterns, wickerwork from the Micronesian Marshall Islands or even carpets of European origin have provided ideas for very distinct painting, comprising very complex compositions of patterns and among the most richly varied forms of decoration from the entire Pacific.

In Hängung #19 Enrico Bach presents new paintings that have been created within the last year. Rectangular, overlapping colour fields form the basic structure of his compositions. They intersect, are staggered behind one another or appear to push across one another, creating the illusion of a spatial structure but one that is incomprehensible in its depth. Edges of areas that lie in a supposed lower layer of the picture set linear accents, particularly at the picture edges. With spatial and light values in the colouring, Enrico Bach condenses the complexity of his painted image spaces. Colour progressions that generate the impression of shadows and structures that produce an apparently tangible materiality allow objective aspects to enter into his abstract painting.

Enrico Bach faces the option of infinite variations with artistic thematic questions, which can be seen in pictures from three new series of works in Hängung #19. In the works in the RS series, large screen areas reveal the topic. In pieces from the HM series, the artist uses metallic gloss colours and typographical elements, whereas the PS series is characterised by strongly differentiated structures, which themselves are symbolic.

The artistic work of Franziska Holstein is highly process-oriented. In the thick material application and in the relief on the surface, the paintings on canvas, o.T. (M4, 2012) and o.T. (M2, 16), indicate multiple processing of the compositional structure. By contrast, pieces from the o.T. (45) series emerge from processes that are both artistic and manual craft. They produce panels in acrylic paint, in which the paper image base is surrounded by layers of colour applied on both sides.

In the work of Franziska Holstein, the principle of working and reworking multiple times allows recourse to existing works, which become the resource, the stimulus, for new pieces. From 2014, Hängung #19 presents a seven-part series of lithographs on paper and a 19-part series of hand-offset prints, which refer to division ratios or formal structures from previous paintings.

Franziska Holstein’s systematic way of working is expressed not least in two new works, which have been created for Hängung #19; wall piece o.T. (64) spreads over the area in combinational lawfulness, whilst the artist presents a three-dimensional work for the first time with the o.T. (FP 3D) series. The installation on level 2 at KUNSTWERK comprises around sixty elements of a 170-part series based on an area divided into six fields and their folds.

In an interview, Ayan Farah defines her work as pictorial, even if it does not conform to the usual concept of what painting is. Here, the foundation or basis of her pictures is not the usual canvas that is commercially available; she uses found, often historic materials, which already carry their own (life) story. In places, fragments of embroidered ornaments or lettering emphasise a personalised quality to the material. In the choice of colour, she also pursues her own direction. On her project trips, she collects minerals, plants and soils, which are charged with a specific character of the place from which they were taken and consequently also comprise more than a commonly available pigment. The work in the studio resembles a chemical experiment, as only little or no influence can be exerted over the absorbency of the materials and the colour reaction, especially when various substances are combined. This is also often true if the artist exposes the coloured materials to sunlight over a prolonged period and thus bleaches them again. In the method of colouring and of combining the material elements, Ayan Farah refers to African handcraft traditions, which ultimately connect in her pieces with elements of western abstract art.

In the the works presented in the entrance area and on level 1, altered perspectives in and of the space form the central aspects. The Top Shot Helmet of Julius von Bismarck provides a bird’s eye view of oneself. Physical and optical-visual perception of space and spatiality are thus uncoupled from each other and demand a high level of adaptability in movement. Multiple perspectives also characterise the photographic works of Sinta Werner, who combines two and three-dimensional aspects with one another and thus understands how to provide a mixture of real and engineered image realities in their simultaneous architectures.

The works of Rolf Wicker and Katja Ka are presented in the hall on level 2. As artistic confrontations, they meet in the tension area of architecture and sculpture but differ essentially in the scale of their works. Wicker’s installation is extensive. Its spatial designs, derived from the example of the structural shapes of the Basilica of St Clement in Rome, can be experienced in the flesh as you move and linger within them. By contrast, the Retrouvagen by Katja Ka have model dimensions. They take the character of fictitious architectures, the monumentality of which is conveyed imaginatively. The title of the series of works, which is derived from the French “retriever”, in English “to find”, refers here to what is found both in the material used and in the creative process.

With the contribution of Lukasz Lendzinski and Peter Weigand, a so-called “open project” is included in the exhibition at KUNSTWERK for the first time. The name of their architectural practice, Umschichten (Restructuring), is the agenda. Their concepts, which are newly developed for every place and mostly temporary demand, are based on the use of existing elements that can be returned undamaged after use. At KUNSTWERK they allow different special constellations to emerge in three phases from reusable construction modules, each of which produces new spatial experiences. Their project is participative insofar as visitors are able to follow the changeability of the system for themselves. The restructuring work takes place in mid-March and early May.

Internationally, Sean Scully is one of the leading abstract painters of the present day. Since his professorship in Munich in 2002-2007, he has worked not only in his studios in New York, London and Barcelona but also in Mooseurach in Upper Bavaria. This is where the painting Green Pale Light was created. It picks up on the colourful nature of the scenic environment but also captures a special, manifestly melancholic mood at the same time in the consonance of color. Sean Scully condenses the momentary impression in an essential way by translating it into pure painting: in coloured areas arranged horizontally and vertically with open contours, which vibrate softly in the colour tone.

In his image series, Sean Scully pursues a specific, underlying artistic idea and intensifies it by differentiating it. However, he does this not only purely in the abstract interplay of artistic possibilities. As art historian Armin Zweite puts it, Scully is mainly concerned with emotionally charging the intangible fabric of his painting with structure, mood and the application of colour. Each picture is closely linked to a personal experience, an emotional state.

The painting Green Pale Light is part of the Wall of Light picture series, behind which lies the observation of constantly changing appearances of light on a wall. Against this, the arrangement of the coloured areas and strips, which is characteristic of Scully’s pieces, forms other structures in the etchings. In Cut Ground Red, it is marked by the outline of our cultural landscape. Doric is inspired by the culture of ancient Greece.

The existential depth in the pictures of Sean Scully laid a path to Dieter Krieg in the stock of the collection. Having been a professor at the college of art in Düsseldorf for many years, his work is known mainly for large-scale pictures with the powerful application of (often trivial) figurative motifs and writing. The Bilder für die Dämmerung (Pictures for Twilight) from the last phase of his life are set apart from these by the absence of colour, without losing the obsessive power of the work. They are drawn and written in charcoal on paper, glued onto canvas and collaged into the shape of the image frame. They appear like a radical and uncompromising statement, encapsulating the essence of his life’s work.

Photographic notations of fleeting but special encounters with people in everyday life and on journeys enter the multifaceted image spaces of Eva Wagner, whose work is displayed in an installation on the main wall of the 2nd floor.

With an impression of a bird’s-eye view, Andreas Gefeller offers a view that is both documentary and fictional of a New York flat roof full of graffiti.