German and International Contemporary Art in Dialogue with antique Objects from China. In cooperation with Vanderven Oriental Art, s'Hertogenbosch (NL)

The artists presented in the exhibition SILENCE share a common interest in reduction, light, monochrome, and a visual language of silence. Antonio Calderara, in particular, has repeatedly been described as a “painter of silence”. “I want to paint nothingness, which is everything: silence, light, measure, order, harmony. The infinite.” With these words, Calderara described what he sought in his painting. At the same time, they point to an idea that runs throughout the exhibition SILENCE: a concentration on the essential and the notion that a particular intensity can emerge precisely through reduction.

In Calderara’s work, light itself almost becomes the subject of painting. Robert Ryman and Raimund Girke explore the many possibilities of the colour white. In the works of Heinz Mack, Walter Leblanc, Hal Busse, and Dadamaino, light, structure, and surface become essential means of expression. Herman de Vries, whose works are currently being presented at the ZERO Foundation in Düsseldorf, is represented with four works. His artistic practice explores chance, order, nature, and the reduction of personal influence.
Other works in the exhibition derive their concentration from repetition, emptiness, materiality, or a restrained gesture. Chun Kwang Young creates striking surface structures by wrapping hundreds of hand-cut Styrofoam triangles in inscribed Korean mulberry paper, carefully arranging and affixing them to the picture support. The result are three-dimensional Aggregations of extraordinary sculptural presence, as well as a meditative and sculptural quality.
The works of the 20th and 21st centuries are juxtaposed in the exhibition with ancient Chinese bronzes and ceramics from the collection of VANDERVEN Oriental Art in ’s-Hertogenbosch. They originate from a different period and culture and follow their own concepts of form, material, and meaning. Yet surprising connections emerge: in the clarity of form, in the attention to surfaces and materials, and not least in what is left unspoken and empty – and in what emerges in between.

Pablo Atchugarry, Hal Busse, Antonio Calderara, Dadamaino, Herman de Vries, Rupprecht Geiger, Raimund Girke, Gotthard Graubner, Tschang-Yeul Kim, Chun Kwang Young, Walter Leblanc, Heinz Mack, Milan Mölzer, Robert Ryman, Lee Ufan, Paul Van Hoeydonck