ESSENTIALS

The dynamic group exhibition Essentials highlights stellar artworks by gallery artists complemented with additional selected works. Changing throughout this summer, it is designed to offer visitors a curated look at a variety of work to welcome them back to the exhibition experience.

Christiane Baumgartner’s large monochrome woodcut Storm at Sea (2013) presents the viewer with an ambiguous seascape. While the title alludes to a natural phenomenon, the image depicts an explosion in a military conflict.

Peter Alexander’s luminous, semi-transparent urethane object Red Puff retains some of the visual properties of a liquid even after it has solidified and when looking at the work, its form seems to blur at the edges.

Jeff Wall’s light box Staining bench, furniture manufacturer's, Vancouver (2003) is a venture into the arena of still life, and shows him exploring the interface between representation and abstraction.

On Kawara worked on this landmark Today series or Date Paintings for nearly five decades. The black painting featured in the exhibition is inscribed with the date 22. AUG 1995. The cardboard storage box Kawara fabricated for the Date Painting is lined with a cutting from the local Cologne newspaper Kölner Stadtanzeiger of the same date.

James White’s meticulous black and white paintings of everyday interiors create a narrative space of ambiguity. His works are investigations into the surface and depth of images, closeness and distance, presence and absence.

Larry Sultan hired Mexican day laborers as actors and subjects in his series Homeland (2006–2009), which he made on the outskirts of Southern Californian suburbs. The photographs romanticize the terrain of the suburbs and charge the activities of day laborers, which are rather mundane in nature, with metaphorical meaning, particularly in light of the political developments of the past years.

Sabine Moritz's works reveal a finely tuned approach to observing supposedly everyday, personal scenes from life and capturing them in such a way that a transcending moment seems to be inherent in them. Since 2015, the artist’s practice has also explored abstract painting in a rich colour spectrum revealing energy, movement and rhythm. The exhibition features the new large-scale oil on canvas painting Galateia II (2021).

Selected vintage photographs from Diane Arbus’s portraits from nudist camps and Helen Levitt’s images of Mexico City will also be on view.