The name Ge Ba refers to a composition of pieces of textiles. These are still usable parts of clothing that can't be worn anymore, such as jacket collars or pockets, pieces of tattered silk mandarin robes, textiles with flower prints from children's dresses, that were traditionally used for patching.
The textile workers who saved these textiles by cutting them out, and then collecting them, used the pieces not just for patching, but also to create free abstract compositions that are similar to the work of the Western avant-garde created at the same time. In contrast to the prevalent view in the West that art is the work of an individual, Ge Ba are collective works, even when they were designed by just one woman. We are showing Ge Ba from the 1950s. They are unique documents, as only very few of them still survive. The French collector and businessman Francois Dautresme (1925–2002), founder of the Compagnie Française de l'Orient et de la Chine, recognised how special the Ge Ba works are, and brought them to Europe in the 1960s.
Female creativity has always found ways of expressing itself. What was lacking was recognition. The materials and techniques chosen by women were not given any space in the artistic canon. They established themselves only slowly, and the means of artistic expression in general were thus expanded and enriched. Rosemarie Trockel knitted her paintings, which was revolutionary. Now, finally, hitherto unseen and unexhibited works by women are publicly shown.
Ge Ba were exhibited in 2003 at the Centre Pompidou Paris in the exhibition Alors la Chine?, and in 1995 at Fondation Joan Miró Barcelona in Art de Viure, Art de Sobreviure. Galerie Albrecht is showing them for the first time in Germany.
In his work, the artist Michael Toenges pursues the question of what colour and paint are. Even if paint is capable of generating immaterial things – of expressing ideas, emotions, drama, and silence—it is first and foremost material. His paintings are colour assemblages; the colour fields, created in numerous different ways, that come together and are layered on top of one another, have a pastose, material character. In his works, too, there are patterns and monochrome fields, as if he held pieces of colour fields in his hands and inserted them into the plane of the painting. Free and disassociated from anything figurative, he follows his eye and the psychology of the colours.
Paints are bearers of light, and in harmony, they start to shine. Michael Toenges' great art is to make paints and thus colours shine. Every colour has an effect on its environment, places emphases, determines the character of the painting, which can change with every brushstroke. Like an animal tamer, Toenges keeps an eye on everything; he must introduce calm where things get turbulent, and sometimes he has to introduce dynamism. Even though painted in a pastose manner, his paintings seem transparent and light. We are showing a selection of very recent works by him, from this year.
Michael Toenges (born in 1952 in Pfaffenhofen/Ilm, Germany) lives and works in Cologne. His paintings have been exhibited in Germany, Japan, Switzerland and the United States; this year he will show works at the PEAC Museum, Freiburg. His paintings are in private as well as public collections, including Museum Wiesbaden and Kolumba Museum Cologne.
Established by Susanne Albrecht in 1986 off the heels of her studies in philosophy, art history, and Italian philology at Freie Universität Berlin and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Galerie Albrecht represents young European and Asian artists as well as influential established European and American post-War and contemporary artists.
