reinhold koehler was one of the first artists that i met and admired when i was a student. it was clear to me that i would not become an artist myself, but i was completely captivated to see how someone could destroy a white sheet of paper with paint, coloring it with dark colors and then cutting it into one hundred little pieces, leaving in its path traces of damage and chaos, a chaos that i admired but could never have described, or to see how someone could rationalize their choices, that there were preferences, but really just subjectively. that someone could perhaps anticipate in his ecstatic work process the possible results of a second path seemed inconceivable to me.
but now he managed, in the midst of his finely achieved chaos, to find a second way forward, the form of a network that he projected on the work and then in steps tongue-like segments cut out such that he could separate the pieces, not completely, a turned up edge should remain, he turned up this tongue and glued it back onto the page, which was comprised of diverse realities, the original white paper, the painted dark surfaces, the cut pieces with their scratched and damaged traces, and so a completely new, dark reality and now through this act, a part was coarsely removed and injured but through its placement and gluing nothing was in fact lost. it became clear that beneath every layer you dealt with there were further layers, the fine lines of ecstasy separating everything, a large network that markings would divulge, the creater koehler certainly had that in mind, but we as observers not since we could only see the finished laid network. his decollage.
but reinhold koehler was not a conceptual artist who could have left the piece as it was here, as an injured object with visible cuts. the decollage was evidently for him one of his painterly processes, he applied these tongue-shaped forms differently, painted them and emphasized their edges. he created a new and enigmatic piece with diverse rhythms, the ecstatic, in comprehensible rhythms of the underlying layer, the strong rhythm of the upper network. from one element to another and then the entire image. the selection of decollagen by reinhold koehler will clearly show this.
in this regard as a necessary counterpart the selection of "lines" as an exhibition. we are showing examples of works on this theme, "lines," suggested by 39 artists. today there are so many drawing programs, so that for the artist or designer there is no problem finding the perfect line, repeated in their thickness, length, in how close they lie to one another, the diagonal – all of that no longer has any appeal.
artists select the line as something other than the perfect mark made with a ruler, perhaps not found in architecture, drawn as a plumb-line. the line is shown in the context of a room, as a separation in the corner of a room, as marking, as an interrupting line, as a thread that wants to stretch between four nails, but which is too short, yet which has a magnet on each end both of which are drawn to each other and so an imaginary line in the air is created. the hand painted parts, which depend on you, on how awake and concentrated you are, how tired, shaky, gauche you are, all of this produces diverse lines, all dependent on you. we are showing lines as drawn lines, from other materials like neon lights, photos of lines which are reflected in water, handwritten notes, drawn script.
we look forward to seeing you on 10 december in the görbelheimer mühle, seriously admiring and cheerfully laughing.
in anticipation adelheid hoffmann, camille hoffmann and our team and many artists.
yoko terauchi followed this path every day from here to ossenheim zu her installation and observed the birds, the water, the path. tired, happy, hungry. she took her smartphone from her bag and said those were 5,359 steps…that is how we see it still today…pip culbert, ironically, gave me a gift of a ball of white thread, "3 unbroken kilometers – a flat snowball – a cloud" … see how far you can go...
