We are kicking off our 30th anniversary programme with a selection of four different positions on extended colour field painting. 

Ulrike Arnold paints with earth, sand and stones and travels to remote places on all continents, where she works in situ, exposed to the weather and the natural forces of the environment. She collects her materials on site and mixes them with a binder to create her large canvases, which capture the essence of the places her travels take her. For several years, Arnold has also been painting with meteorite dust, which she owes to a chance meeting with a meteorite researcher. This material bears witness to the origin of our planet in the solar system. Her paintings are a tribute to the earth and its place in the cosmos.

Hal Busse (1926–2018) an artist whose work and its significance in the context of post-war German art have only gained broader attention in art historical consideration in recent years. A temporal focus is placed on the late 1950s, a very productive and artistically decisive period. It is also the time when Busse was in close contact with the ZERO group. What connects the artist to ZERO almost reveals itself: Mack's dynamic structures, Piene's grids, Uecker's nails – on formal-aesthetic questions, Busse found quite similar answers. This simultaneity in the development of artistic strategies confirms Busse's connection to the then-current discourses. In the 1950s, images with groups of figures were created, whose forms she began to dissolve over time. In this process, the figures eventually dissolved into points, grids, lines, or nails. In contrast to theZERO...

Ulrike Arnold paints with earth, sand and stones and travels to remote places on all continents, where she works in situ, exposed to the weather and the natural forces of the environment. She collects her materials on site and mixes them with a binder to create her large canvases, which capture the essence of the places her travels take her. For several years, Arnold has also been painting with meteorite dust, which she owes to a chance meeting with a meteorite researcher. This material bears witness to the origin of our planet in the solar system. Her paintings are a tribute to the earth and its place in the cosmos.

Hal Busse (1926–2018) an artist whose work and its significance in the context of post-war German art have only gained broader attention in art historical consideration in recent years. A temporal focus is placed on the late 1950s, a very productive and artistically decisive period. It is also the time when Busse was in close contact with the ZERO group. What connects the artist to ZERO almost reveals itself: Mack's dynamic structures, Piene's grids, Uecker's nails – on formal-aesthetic questions, Busse found quite similar answers. This simultaneity in the development of artistic strategies confirms Busse's connection to the then-current discourses. In the 1950s, images with groups of figures were created, whose forms she began to dissolve over time. In this process, the figures eventually dissolved into points, grids, lines, or nails. In contrast to the ZERO artists, who developed abstraction more from a technical-formal standpoint, Busse derived non-representation from the figure and never completely lost the connection to representation (although many paintings remained untitled, early abstract works with clear titles such as 'Bathers,' 'Arena,' or 'Markusplatz' confirm this). The common interest, however, was clearly the reduction of figuration in favour of colour and structure and the newly developed possibilities of perceiving of perceiving certain phenomena.


Sylke von Gaza’s creative practice, the veil, a metaphor for interstices and permeability, plays a central role. Half hidden, half visible. The ability to reveal through hiding, to make visible through veiling – the artist has internalized this fundamental potential of painting and made it a central element of her work. "I am fascinated by transformations and their various forms and effects. What is the universal essence of transformation? Transformation and transubstantiation have a sublime, lofty quality and suggest a form of enrichment or refinement. The process is usually shrouded in secrecy, hidden from view, as if veiled. This invisible process interests me. I want to make the invisible visible." 


Rossella Vasta´s decision to turn to abstraction stems from a desire for increasing spirituality. She describes her painting as iconic abstraction. She often specifically points to the meanings of colors in the image. But it does not stop at the image; the image is indeed a window into the infinite. Her works are intended to serve as an opening to another world. Her main concern is the role of art through which people can open emotional and intellectual spaces beyond ordinary feelings, experiences, and possibilities. Spaces that, as Vasta herself writes, one "returns to after some time, for a reunion, to escape forgetfulness." The challenge that Rossella Vasta faces is to use traditional techniques in unconventional ways.

Ulrike Arnold, Hal Busse, Sylke von Gaza, Rossella Vasta