A Painting Exhibition, curated by Christoph Wüstenhagen

Apparently, painting moves something inherent deep inside of us. It is hard to say exactly, but you can guess that it is something which can be transferred on canvas by a strange entanglement of mind, gut and hand. It gains and loses on the way through our body. What remains, appears in front of us. Not really like a miracle, but hard to identify and mysterious, it is not possible to resolve precisely why it is there and appeals to us. It is a matter obviously loaded with the burden of art history and the present age. Even if you try to avert this, something etched and sometimes vain will creep in repeatedly. But you are always trying to control it, to take it crabwise to a point unsettled, not revealing itself but keeping something in hand. Finding out about the world by means of something loosely framed that has not been imagined before an that keeps itself hidden from approaches all too analytic.

Painting never discloses anything concrete, does not want to be ready for solutions and clear arguments. Painting has something to do with a gut feeling. Maybe it is – in a spiritualized way – physical. It moves us but does not reveal anything to us. If it becomes real, it is part of a world within the world, with a noticeably coherent context. Maybe, it does not talk of the things themselves, but rather of what is in between.

Christoph Wüstenhagen