German painter Bernard Lokai uses the historical vernacular of painting – including the gestural brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism and the spray paint of graffiti – to simultaneously absorb and disrupt traditions of landscape and abstract painting, and to explore the question of how to make a picture.

His “Landscape Blocks,” multi-paneled grids composed of eighteen 12 by 16 inch panels, each present an isolated ‘moment’ that individually appears entirely abstract. Lokai paints the small panels on an ongoing basis in the studio, without a plan for where each will fit in the overall grid. At some point he gathers all of the small canvases and chooses which to combine into a set.