Exhibition

Exhibition

Insights into the preparations for a small private exhibition for friends in my studio.

On display was my book Christian Koans.

Every one of us has stood in front of an abstract painting and asked himself, what does the artist want, what did he want to tell me with this painting?

Also abstract is the spoken word. When I want to express a feeling or an experience, it becomes difficult to find words that describe what I feel so that my interlocutor also understands it as I mean it. Although this is often unsuccessful, we all know.

The abstraction of the word increases even further when a third party writes down this conversation in order to make it clear to a fourth party. We all know the sentence, I never said it like that.

The increase in abstraction is when I remember a conversation from decades ago and have to write it down. It's no longer about the actual words spoken, but about what the idea said that made up the feeling.

We know it when we say, my mother used to say, or my grandfather used to say... .

We experience something similar today when we read the Bible. Some things are strange, incomprehensible, contradictory, seemingly inappropriate. Some sentences seem to make no sense and yet the divine should be depicted behind the written word. The Reichenau illuminator monks (Reichenau Island on Lake Constance) tried in their paintings to depict precisely this divine behind. The depicted form, the figure, the word are not the decisive thing, but the thing behind.

In my book "Christian Koans" I have selected nine such texts, reflected on them and painted my pictures to go with them. The viewer now has to find his own way to harmonise the abstract picture and the text.

It was an interesting meeting with many intense and interesting conversations.