GEORG BASELITZ, ERWIN BECHTOLD, PETER BRÜNING, ADOLF LUTHER, HEINZ MACK, OTTO PIENE, BERNARD SCHULTZ

Before the Light brings together a group of pioneering artists whose work foregrounds the nuanced dialogue between darkness and lightness. The exhibition presents works that are immersing from a mystery yet already emitting an internal radiance and initial unveiling of color. The works of these artists in their very own merits reflect the sustained examination of material and perception.

Adolf Luther’s kinetic construction, with its precise engineering and subtle movement, allows light to become a medium itself, emphasizing spatial experience. Otto Piene’s fire- and smoke-based paintings register the traces of combustion, converting processes of destruction and transformation into images that mediate between material density and sensory impact. Baselitz, Bechtold, Brüning, Mack, Schultze and Schumacher extend this conversation in a painterly register, demonstrating how post-war abstraction and the Zero movement grappled with the phenomenology of light. Rather than representing darkness as emptiness or void, these artists use darkness as a form-generating force through layering, scratching, and building up surfaces to create a sense of depth, tension, and energy.

In these works, black functions not as absence but as a conduit for illumination, suggesting an energy that extends beyond literal light. Before the Light invites viewers to observe how darkness can polarize light, encouraging a focused engagement with the formal and experiential dimensions of each work.