Licht & Farbe

The German language engages the term ‚Farbe‘ for both the phenomena of colour and for the material of paint. In contrast, the English language differentiates between colour and paint. In Western Europe, in contrast to Asian culture, the 1970‘s and 80‘s saw the development of a direction in painting where artists oriented their practice around an analytical, even results-driven relationship to the conditions of painting, the process of painting, and the materiality of painting substances.

In this exhibition ‘Licht & Farbe’ Esther Verhaeghe Art Concepts will show paintings as wallworks, objects and spacial installations, including light installations using fluorescent light tubes.

While Helen Calder‘s cast, object-like acrylic surfaces and Christoph Dahlhausen‘s high-gloss car paint and light works are superficially inspected dealing with the material and physical aspects and presenting a painting method mostly erasing the artists hands touch, in Katharina Grosse’s and Christine Reifenberger’s works the “writing” of the artists hand is very visible and touching. In contrast to Katharina Grosse, whose early works show impulsive and fast brushstrokes superimposed on each other, Christine Reifenberger works on her can vas and paper surfaces for weeks and months with egg tempera colours that create a cosmos of dense depth. Thus time as an important topos is added to the material and technical aspects of each art work. Juxtapositions of different painting approaches, painting material, support and painting techniques are extremely interesting and important but it is not an end in itself, rather, it is the starting point of a more nuanced engagement with each artwork. The interest of the exhibition is not just to show material and materialistic juxtapositions – however relevant and broadened they are – in the end the viewer’s experience and their dialogue with the presence of the painting – its appearance – is what it is about.

Esther Verhaeghe Art Concepts is proud to present Katharina Grosse, Christoph Dahlhausen and New Zealand based Helen Calder for the first time,
the latter one even for the first time in Europe. We are looking forward to a reunion with the works of Christine Reifenberger, who has held an important artistic position in the gallery for years.

Christoph Dahlhausen

Helen Calder

Christina Reifenberger

Katharina Grosse