katrina blannin, gb; richard paul lohse, ch; jürg stäuble, ch; and jeffrey steele, gb will be the four artists whose works will be on view at the gallery following a complicated history. my thoughts on this.

richard paul lohse is the modern artist here, who pays attention to the development of his time and includes it. precision, machines, repeatability, modular approach. responsibility in a democratic world. education with the goal of a classless society. history had shown the opposite, the monarchy, or, as at the beginning of the 20th century tipping into dictatorship through power or seduction. the struggle of the artists to achieve a possible awakening of the people by shaking them up, or to show possibilities later in the "bauhaus" and to see with horror how a modern serial production can become the opposite: as a top performance and forced to precision, for example in sports or military, had failed. the exhibition in munich and berlin, degenerate art. artists, defamed and endangered. emigrants also in lohse's kitchen while he was working on book covers for poets who no longer had a chance of being published in germany, for the important gutenberg book guild. this is where his perception of figure and ground arose, be it figurative or non-figurative, art that he judged to be too subjective, no matter how ingenious it was. for him and for others. also the diagonal, which he saw as movement, a representation of progress, the curve, the circle. he continued to use this in his applied art for a long time, but he considered it too convincing in free, non-representational painting. his form became the colored, borderless square, as a democratic form with the same edges, defined content, such as standardized colours. his life's work was aimed at this form in various sizes, serially, to graze, to increasing rhythms, circularly, as a group, as progression, not to infinity, but to the edge of the picture. on the screen, also with reflections, here with diagonal complex groups. he managed not to repeat any picture, except in the decision to release it for a graphic, to make the joy of seeing it possible for many. with new technology, good for us, colored screen printing. this is how single sheets, graphic portfolios and our two multiples came about, one of which is the most complicated work we have ever printed: '15 systematic color rows with 5 identical horizontal rhythms,' 115 x 115 cm.

for jeffrey steele, lohse was an inner orientation, he translated many of his theses into english. he himself was too restless and skeptical to believe in an educated democracy and to try to reach others and himself with his painting or his hundreds of sketches and drawings, models and theses. as a modern man he saw the contradictions. he lived in a royal empire whose wealth also arose from slavery as a colonial power, but whose language, scattered across the world, was able to bring it together and enable understanding. his restless pictures are often built on ascending diagonals. (see lohse). black nervous forms on a light background or, as in the exhibition the picture “peccavi”, in which many colored individual parts of increasing size cover the initially white picture with swinging tracks and groups, vibrating in the vision, swinging beyond the edge of the picture. or in the second large picture "solar wind", the colored net, which has the power of persuasion to span huge areas, moves rapidly, but does not catch us threateningly, as a detail reveals that the net is not stable, its knots are already loosening . steele shows large areas and connections as a network, the figure-ground problem has long been forgotten here. we are excited about the many drawings that katrina blannin is bringing with her, also to be exhibited. she studied with him, then she was his conversation partner and friend for many years.

katrina blannin's works are new for us, we are looking forward to this very current series of her pictures, which show an open row of circles, but here also capture the spaces between these circles to form a square field, this emptiness that could become the background, here colored in the fine color field consisting of circles moves in.these circles of color do not overlap, they stand calmly next to each other, get their soft depths and heights from the radiance of the color. sometimes rhythmically triggered by dark circles.

jürg stäuble is a modern artist. he observes the world, he knows its historical material assessment, the old and current, a baroque railing, a garage roof, balcony railings in modern housing developments, sculptures in front of the football stadium. these have certain, traditional material expectations, often fashionable, e.g. in clothing, in tombstones, in jewellery. the expectation applies to the object. the rest is forgotten. this includes the packaging, the content is interchangeable, the packaging remains, it fills the gap. it should be light, stable, environmentally friendly, look and smell good, be cheap. air has made a good contribution as a space filler, stable in styrofoam or enclosed in bubble wrap, or the drainpipe but also the plastic cup, the cardboard bottle, also on the building, the rain-friendly corrugated iron roof. he uses these materials as new, undamaged materials for his forms, often consolidating them by filling, sanding and painting. he is not a purist but a rogue, he brings the collector the expected precious material.- material stimulates him to make things, vice versa he wants a form and looks for the appropriate material, often combined with poetic wit. through the use of corrugated iron and pipes, perforations, he comes to shapes that systematically lead out of the strictness of the well-known square. he has achieved a lot in urban planning, broken up the monotony of housing estates, we are waiting:

adelheid hoffmann, camille hoffmann, the artists and the team, unfortunately not johanna lohse, who unexpectedly died weeks ago.