GROUP EXHIBITION

This is an ideal that we see increasingly rarely, but this kind of winter still exists. In the exhibition, it is documented by Peter Mathis’ photographs. In a snow-covered landscape, two ski hikers and the traces they leave are visible, photographed from a distance. The sun draws dark shadows onto the snow. In another picture, the whiteness of the untouched snow is illuminated by the sun, which makes it appear in some places lighter, in others darker, similar to an abstract painting.

Peter Tollens takes up the theme of all-encompassing snow in his paintings. Carefully composed out of numerous colours, the works are in the end covered by a monochrome layer of paint whose hue determines the colours underneath it. This can be easily seen in the series of paintings in the same format.

When the thermometer falls, ice forms, creating sparkling ice crystals that are quite transient. Andreas von Ow produces them: out of plastic covers of car lights, found on the street. He cleans and grinds them down, and applies these delicate parts to a sheet of glass. Now they are everlasting ice crystals, sparkling in the sun.

Michela Ghisetti turns to the stars. On black paper, she draws groups of colourful sparkling points on a checkered grid drawn by hand. Stars are not randomly placed in the sky; rather, they are part of an order—in the drawings, however, little trouble-makers have intruded and mingle in a disorderly fashion.

The Starshell on Ruth Bernhard’s black-and-white photograph is entirely surrounded by stars. It seems to float in the universe.

In her white dress that surrounds her like a luminous shimmer, Emese Kazár’s little Margarita, taken from the famous Velasquez painting Las Meninas, also seems like a star. Her face and visible hand seem spherical. The red eyes, lips and bows on the dress and its black neckline accentuate what is otherwise a gentle, white glow.

Sandy Volz captures the light, transparent colours of the winter sky photographically. A band of delicate orange-pink and dissolving white pushes its way into the blue and divides the surface of the sky—creating a luminous pastel gradient on the paper like watercolour.

With Chen Ruo Bing’s paintings, finally, we imaginarily enter the sky, a space seemingly created by light that seems to open up into infinity before our eyes. We see two spaces made of light: in the colours blue, white, and red, and in grey, blue, white, and purple.