From Line to Light

Description

SETAREH
20 October–18 November 2023

SETAREH is thrilled to announce the exhibition From Line to Light, a survey of important post-war positions. This presentation follows a period of time in which artistic developments evolved through gestural abstraction to move beyond the picture plane and physically out into the world. This rich exhibition of art works from 1955 until today will present extraordinary examples of key figures in European art that are important for tracing abstraction from expressive mark making towards a consciously critical engagement with material, largely industrially sourced, that would literally reflect light from their innovative forms to express the technical landscape of the post- war period.

Key to presentation will be the inclusion of significant works by Hede Bühl, Adolf Luther and Otto Piene which will be exhibited here for the first time. These artists made significant contributions to realising a new objectivity through their expanded approach to form through their artistic production.

The exhibition begins with early lyrical compositions like Hartung, Schneider, Sonderborg, and Winter, in which they pictured their world through gestural swaths of paint and pushed their formal languages by making their marks with an increasingly nuanced texture. Building up and cutting through layers of paint, they wrestled with their material to realize forms of visual transcendence. Raw yet elegant, their reductive methods produced stirring images which reach beyond representation to achieve increasingly psychological dimensions for their art.

Impasto built up as a physical protrusion in the early work of Christian Megert, who is an important pivotal figure in this exhibition, became 'Skulptur' (which is the title of this early series of wall bound works) that reached out towards the viewer. An active part of a self-identified avantgarde, largely centered around the ZERO group and their international colleagues, this generation (Mack, Luther, Piene, Uecker, Bühl, Rickey) began to make their output more physical. No longer specifically painting and now pushing the limits of traditional sculpture, their artistic practices would redefine how audiences encounter their ideas.

In encountering the development of this strand of artists abstract experimentation, a common thread amongst their diverse positions may be the artist's shared intention for realizing experiences of transcendence. They share the belief that we benefit through human enquiry that reaches beyond quotidian experience and that we may touch on these perspectives through encountering outstanding works of art.

Press release courtesy SETAREH.

SETAREH

Königsallee 27-31
Düsseldorf, 40212
Germany

www.setareh.com
+49 211 82827171

Mon - Fri, 10 am - 7 pm
Sat, 10 am - 6 pm

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Hans Hartung
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Walter Leblanc
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Adolf Luther
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Heinz Mack
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Christian Megert
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Otto Piene
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Gérard Schneider
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George Rickey
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Turi Simeti
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Takis
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Günther Uecker
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