ANDREAS ZAGLER – Physiognomien

In ihrem Wesen hinterfragt die Werkgruppe der Farbobjekte das Verhältnis und die Unterscheidung eines Bildes gegenüber anderen Dingen – wo verläuft die Grenze zwischen Bild und Abbild, zwischen Realität und Imitation. Die Bilder dieser Werkgruppe bestehen aus mehreren übereinander geschichteten, teilweise pastos aufgetragenen, Gesten und Flächen aus Farbe, welche nicht nur das Konkrete der Malerei, sondern auch das Gestische, das Szenische eines Stilllebens und das Wesenhafte eines Porträts verbildlichen.

Auch in seinen zwei großflächigen monochromen Bildern bindet Zagler die Zeit und die Handlung des Hinterlassens von Spuren auf die materielle, konkrete Fläche des Bildträgers. Er hebt diese dadurch aus der zeitlichen und räumlichen Ordnung des Schaffens, in jene des statischen Moments eines Bildes – die wiederkehrenden Aktionen und die Zeit werden zum zentralen Bildmotiv – der Prozess wird zum Bild.
Der Titel der Ausstellung „Physiognomien“ ist dabei gewissermaßen eine Umkehr jenes abstrakten Gedankens, der seinem künstlerischen Schaffen zugrunde liegt: Unsichtbares durch die Konkretheit des Materials zu binden, konservieren und sichtbar zu machen – es gibt dem Unsichtbaren ein Gesicht.

Text: Laura Etz

Showroom: Isabelle Borges

ASTRID BUSCH – Showroom

SOPHIA SCHAMA – S 5925 // EN

Sophia Schama’s abstract painting is characterized by the tension between surface and space. Although she forgoes representational motifs, her paintings create a strong three-dimensionality. Layers of color seem to overlap, shift and permeate each other. The spatiality in Sophia Schama’s paintings has not only a visual but also a tactile quality. The surface of her paintings often appears relief-like, the paint seems to detach itself from the canvas and assert its own space.

In the interplay of hard, almost technical lines and soft, organic structures, Sophia Schama uses geometric elements that look like grids, tubes or architectural fragments, but never completely merge into a recognizable function. They remain hints that combine with painterly gestures and spontaneous placements. She sets an accent against quick identification and certain labeling. Instead, the works invite the viewer to engage in an open process of seeing, in which meaning, form and space are constantly shifting.

Sophia Schama (*1966 in Sofia, Bulgaria) studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and graduated in 2000 as a master student of Ralf Kerbach.
Sophia Schama has been a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts since 2013 and held a deputy professorship for painting at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle from 2016-2018. She lives and works in Berlin.

KAZUKI NAKAHARA – Light field // EN

Kazuki Nakahara’s drawings unfold a quiet, meditative presence. Using colored pencil, charcoal and the fine structures in self-made paper, he creates linear pictorial worlds that appear both technical and organic in their transparency and complexity. Lines condense into networks, dissolve at rhythmic intervals, intersect, flow apart – a quiet interplay between structure and dissolution, order and chance. The patient repetition of lines creates moments of inner concentration and outer movement – like a visual breathing rhythm.

Deeply rooted in the tradition of Japanese calligraphy, which was passed on to him by his father and grandfather, Kazuki Nakahara transforms this technique into a contemporary language. Not as a decorative quotation, but as a conceptual attitude: line as sign, as trace, as energy. The tension arises in the ambivalence – between the minimalist means and the complex structure that results.

Kazuki Nakahara was born in 1980 in the Japanese prefecture of Kagawa. He moved to Berlin in 2005, where he studied fine art under Prof. Hanns Schimansky at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee. He graduated as a master student in 2011. Since then he has lived and worked in Berlin.

Kazuki Nakahara’s works have been shown in numerous international exhibitions, including London, Berlin and Tokyo. He has received several awards for his drawing work, most recently the Egmont Schaefer Prize for Drawing in 2020. In 2024 he received the Berlin Senate’s working scholarship for visual arts, in 2022 a scholarship from the Neustart Kultur / Stiftung Kunstfonds program. Kazuki Nakahara has been a lecturer at the University of Art and Design in Pforzheim since 2023.

SOPHIE HEINRICH – Showroom // DE

In Sophie Heinrichs Gemälden haben die strenge Konzentration auf das Lineare und die Setzung von großen, oftmals in Dreiecksform gemalten Flächen Bild prägende Bedeutung. Dabei werden häufig große, unbemalte Partien und die Struktur der Leinwand als Kompositionselemente und als Bildfarbe einbezogen. Jede einzelne der präzisen Setzungen, jeder Strich, jede Linie, jede Fläche sind sorgsam pointiert. Manche Linien sind fest und dominant, andere zart und kaum wahrnehmbar. Denn nicht nur der wohl überlegten Komposition innerhalb eines Gemäldes gilt ihr Interesse, sondern auch die Bezugnahme einzelner Elemente zu anderen Bildern. So gibt es immer wieder Tableaus, die aus mehreren, zum Teil großformatigen Leinwänden zu einem Bild zusammengefügt werden.

TAIYOH MORI, NORA SCHATTAUER
– Minimal Motion // EN

In the exhibition Minimal Motion by Nora Schattauer and Taiyoh Mori, two artistic positions encounter each other that differ in their materiality and methodology, but are deeply connected in their sensitive approach to processes of visibility and transformation.

Taiyoh Mori’s works are characterized by extreme reduction. His drawings and objects demand concentrated observation in order to experience the subtle interplay of medium and light. Sometimes there are only delicate lines on paper, other times subtle engravings in glass that cast thin shadows on the background. Light and drawing merge into a flowing unity. By deliberately avoiding expressive gestures or striking forms, he creates a fragile field of tension between the visible and the invisible, between materiality and the ephemeral. His works invite us to slow down our perception and engage with minimal shifts in space. This creates an intense closeness between the viewer and the work that does not impose itself, but unfolds in the act of observation.

Nora Schattauer differentiates the movement possibilities of colors and forms within the paper. This results in color gradients and structures that change due to the specific reactions of the materials at the beginning of their creation. The process remains visible and lends the works an organic, almost lifelike quality. Her works operate at the interface between drawing and painting, between random structure and deliberate placement. Patterns and forms are not created through classical creative decisions, but as energetic protocols of experimental processes. Her works transcend boundaries – between line and surface, between figuration and abstraction – and continue a visual language that eludes determinism and is in a constant state of flux.

What Taiyoh Mori and Nora Schattauer have in common is their intensive exploration of materiality and temporality. In their own way, both explore the subtle forces that shape works and allow them to be reinterpreted in a constant dialog with space, light and the viewer. The exhibition makes this dialog visible – as an encounter of reduction and expansion, of control and openness, of trace and process.

SOPHIE HEINRICH – Showroom // EN

In Sophie Heinrich’s paintings, the strict concentration on the linear and the setting of large, often triangularly painted surfaces are of formative importance. Large, unpainted areas and the structure of the canvas are often included as compositional elements and the painting’s color. Each of the precise settings, every stroke, line and surface are carefully emphasized. Some lines are firm and dominant, others delicate and barely perceptible. She is not only interested in the carefully considered composition within a painting, but also in how individual elements relate to other pictures. Thus there are always tableaux that are assembled from several, sometimes large-format canvases to form a single picture.

SIMONE LUCAS – Showroom // DE

Die Bildwelt in den Gemälden von Simone Lucas ist rätselhaft, träumerisch, versonnen und dabei immer einfühlsam und sensibel. Die Protagonist*innen begleiten uns durch zeit- und raumlose Szenerien. Sie sind Teil eines eigenen Kosmos, in dem sie lautlos, aber dennoch selbstverständlich agieren, oft verschmolzen mit Motiven aus der Tier- und Pflanzenwelt.
In allen ihren Bildern ist die Farbbehandlung und der bisweilen haptische Farbauftrag sichtbar, der auch die Struktur der Farbe als Material spürbar einsetzt. Dies zeigt sich auch in ihren neuen Bildern von Schmetterlingen oder Pilzen, da die Natur hier ohne jegliches menschliche Zutun eigene Farbspektren entwickelt und mithilfe von Licht und Materie Schönheit schafft.

SIMONE LUCAS (*1973) studierte 1995 bis 2002 an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf bei Prof. Dieter Krieg.
Ihre Werke sind in zahlreichen Sammlungen im In- und Ausland vertreten. Ihre Werke wurden unter anderem in der Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2005), im Kunstmuseum Ratingen (2007), im Museum Baden Solingen (2010) und in der Kunsthalle Darmstadt (2015) gezeigt. Zudem waren ihre Werke im Kunstverein Speyer (2011), in der Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (2013) sowie in Einzelausstellungen im Stadtmuseum Weilheim (2014), in der Abtei Brauweiler in Pulheim (2018), sowie 2021 im Museum Bensheim, in der Neuen Galerie Gladbeck und in der Galerie der Stadt Backnang zu sehen. 2023 wurden Simone Lucas Arbeiten im Mannheimer Kunstverein, in der Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven und in der Neuen Galerie im Haus Beda gezeigt.
2020 erhielt sie ein Arbeitsstipendium der Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn.

ISABELLE BORGES  – Forking Paths // DE

Isabelle Borges’ exhibition title Forking Paths – is based on the short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story is about the infinite realities that open up when people are faced with decisions and the non-linear aspect of time and space.

Analogously, Isabelle Borges refers to the numerous decisions she has to make as an artist when she chooses a particular painting. Before she begins to paint, she photographs natural structures of plants reflected in a particular lake in Brandenburg, which she visits regularly. She transfers the lines, surfaces and spaces she observes there, which are formed by the reeds in the lake, into her paintings as abstract elements. Her paintings are non-representational and radiate an enchanting lightness, despite their geometric rigor. They invite the viewer to move their gaze in a shared imaginary space. Isabelle Borges therein concerns herself with the process of deceleration and the perception of color, line and space.

The color surfaces are painted in many layers to create an enormous depth. Lines also change their straight course again and again, bend, cross each other, sometimes widen or taper and become hair-thin.

ISABELLE BORGES, born 1966 in Salvador, Brazil, lives and works in Berlin and Rotterdam and studied fine art at the art academies in Rio de Janeiro and Düsseldorf. In Brazil, she has had solo exhibitions at the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture MUBE, São Paulo (2013) and the Museum of the Republic, Rio de Janeiro (2000). As part of the 14th International Curitiba Biennial, she exhibited in a large hall at the Museum Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba (2019/2020) and most recently at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Salvador (2022). The artist realized a wall painting with installation at the Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin (2021) and had a solo show at the Till Richter Museum in Buggenhagen (2021). In 2022 she presented new prints at the Kunstverein Meißen (2022). In 2025, Isabelle Borges will exhibit at the Kunstmuseum Ahlen and as part of the Capital of Culture 2025 Chemnitz.
The artist’s works are represented in institutional and private collections in Brazil as well as in Europe.

SIMONE LUCAS – Showroom // DE

The imagery in Simone Lucas’ paintings is enigmatic, dreamy and pensive, but always empathetic and sensitive. The protagonists accompany us through timeless and spaceless scenes. They are part of a cosmos of their own, in which they act silently yet naturally, often fused with motifs from the animal and plant world.
In all her paintings, the treatment of color and the occasional haptic application of paint is clearly visible, which makes tangible use of the structure of the paint as a material. This is also evident in her new paintings of butterflies and mushrooms, where nature develops its own color spectra, without any human intervention, and creates beauty with the help of light and matter.

SIMONE LUCAS (*1973) studied from 1995 to 2002 at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Prof. Dieter Krieg.
Her works are represented in numerous collections in Germany and abroad. Her works have been shown at the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2005), the Kunstmuseum Ratingen (2007), the Museum Baden Solingen (2010) and the Kunsthalle Darmstadt (2015), among others. In addition, her paintings were exhibited at the Kunstverein Speyer (2011), the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (2013) and in solo exhibitions at the Stadtmuseum Weilheim (2014), the Abtei Brauweiler in Pulheim (2018), and in 2021 at the Museum Bensheim, the Neue Galerie Gladbeck and the Galerie der Stadt Backnang. In 2023, Simone Luca’s works were shown at the Mannheimer Kunstverein, the Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven and the Neue Galerie im Haus Beda.
In 2020, she received a working grant from the Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn.

LAURA ABERHAM – EN

Laura Aberham’s painting has always made use of various techniques, which are constantly being developed further. She skillfully explores the space of possibilities between forms, structures, lines and volumes and creates a multi-layered interplay of translucent and opaque surfaces. In her abstract, often gestural paintings, she combines free, expressive brushstrokes with the integration of structures to create dynamic, multi-layered works. Materiality and movement play a central role.

In her new paintings, moments of reality are concealed in the abstraction. The exhibition title “Blue Mesa” is taken from the name of a stone landscape in Arizona, USA, which the artist traveled to this summer. The hills there are colored blue, pink, grey and purple. Laura Aberham’s new paintings are deliberately and subtly intended to evoke such associations in the viewer. Nevertheless, her painting remains unquestionably abstract, never oriented towards a concrete naturalistic image.

In her exploration of abstract painting, she understands color as an independent medium of expression, based on large-format, gestural color surfaces. In her large paintings, she experiments with different gradations that result from the interaction of the color with the soft gradations of light on the curvature.

Laura Aberham (*1994) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, initially with Katharina Grosse and graduated in 2019 as a master student of Ellen Gallagher. Laura Aberham lives and works in Düsseldorf. In 2020 she was represented in a group exhibition at the Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf, in 2022 her works were shown in group exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Kunstverein Duisburg and in 2023 at the Glasmalereimuseum in Linnich. Galerie Rupert Pfab presented exhibitions by Laura Aberham in 2019, 2021 and 2023.