The Venetian architect and painter Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) monitored the excavations of antiquities in Rome with great curiosity. His rendering of ruins and sites was such that, even today, they provide us with a good deal of information about the situation at that time. Apparently, this work stirred his imagination for he started a series of etchings of imaginary dungeons and subterranean vaults already before 1750, the famous Carceri d’invenzione. In these etchings, Piranesi challenged the laws of perspective and realistic representation. He filled the sheet with arches, bridges, steps and towers, making it clear that the composition was merely a cut-out of a larger whole. Light and shadow play an expressive role of their own .The Carceri give a vision of labyrinthian catacombs that cannot possibly be reconstructed in a rational way. Jurriaan Molenaar (1968) picks up Piranesi’s technique by making the beholder an eyewitness of situations that are not easily accessible. A seemingly immeasurable space is represented on a flat surface, seen from an apparently unfathomable perspective. It is indeed recognizable. In the paintings of a few years ago, only the outside of a building was represented from a bird’s-eye view. Instead of facing a back¬ground, in these paintings you look down upon a ground exclusively made up of land and water. The building stands on a ground plate like a closed box of irregular shape. Nowadays the painter moves to a spot inside a building, making us experience the three-dimensional structure of walls, floors, door openings and windows from inside. With these interiors, too, he prefers irregularly shaped boxes with unexpected angles, mezzaninos and glass walls that confine a space physically but not visually. Characteristic of all the compositions is the absence of narrative elements. It is not one point in particular that catches the eye. The paint has been applied over the entire canvas with equal precision. This causes a tension between what the painter paints and what he omits. Jurriaan Molenaar is not concerned with expressing details. They distract from the representation of spatial illusion. Every act or incident, if it were only the idea that the building is not finished yet or that someone is about to arrive, is one too many. This principle offers openings to great visual richness. Molenaar’s picture choice is made while moving. With regard to the bird’s-eye perspectives this goes without saying. The painter has made balloon flights and round trips by plane and he has defied his fear of heights in order to master this picture language. The painted image can be nothing but a still, a split second from an infinite series of perspectives. When the artist is on solid ground, as we may assume is the case with the other compositions, what determines the picture cut-out and the vista is still the moving body, head or eye. The impression of the painting finally depends on wich moment was chosen to be frosen. For instance regarding the horizon, which is supposed to be straight, crooked or invisible in relation to the picture surface. Of equal importance at the least is the position of the wall spaces in relation to each other. Any person that has ever walked among high buildings will know how the perspective is distorted with every step he takes. This happens in exactly the same way in an inner space with vistas. Another choice regards the picture cut-out. What are the edges of the composition, and what is their effect on the degree of realism of the composition? Impressionist townscapes for the first time showed street scenes with a seemingly accidental cutting of the houses at the painting’s edge. Molenaar often does this in the wide, lying formats. The effect still is, just like with Gustave Caillebotte and Camille Pisarro, that the painting is suggestive of a run-on representation.(1) Jurriaan Molenaar shares with the impressionists a similar fascination with contemporary street scenes, although the outcome is hugely different. Molenaar travels a lot and the architecture that stirs his imagination is the universal construction with concrete, glass and plaster walls, which can be found from Cologne to Cape Town and from Chicago to Singapore. This worldwide spread causes that Molenaar’s motifs can be recognized everywhere and yet cannot be placed as a specific situation, found exclusively in a well-defined spot. For all his simplifying and stylising, Molenaar does not violate this conceivable reality. He sticks to the eyewitness principle, which means that he does not repre¬sent anything that cannot have been visible from the artist’s perspective at the time of painting. The advantage of this principle is that the beholder can imagine himself standing on the very spot where the painter was when he decided upon his picture cut-out.(2) Thus we get to the very crux of these paintings: fascination with space, suggested solely by colour on canvas. The painter may not overstep the borderlines of sugges-tion, for if he would retell the emotion he felt when he hit upon a usable image there would be nothing left but rude everyday realism and not the transparent piece of labyrinth coloured in grey light that we get to see now. What that labyrinth is composed of – constructions, materials and measurements – is left unresolved by the painter, and the beholder instinctively knows the answer. The fact that he is steered in this by the way colours alter in a seemingly monochrome surface, remains under the skin. It is in the play with light and shadow that, for the keen observer, the only inconsistencies occur in these otherwise so soundly based compositions. Here the painter demonstrates that he has been touched by the ‘other world’, when he learned how to paint icons in a Russian monastery in 1989. He writes about this himself: ‘This ‘other world’ had a number of striking rules; for instance, ‘reverse perspective’ was used, which made it possible to see from an object both the left side and the right side. And since the ‘other world’ itself was the source of light, it was represented without shadows. Besides all, I was intrigued by the stylised picture language.’ It is Jurriaan Molenaar’s ambition that the eye of the beholder keeps roaming inces-santly. That it is captured in his dungeons and never gets bored. 1. On the problem of the picture cut-out and the possible relation with photography, see: Kirk Varnedoe, A Fine Disregard, What Makes Modern art Modern, New York 1990, especially chapters 1, Near and Far, and 5, Overview: the Flight of the Mind. 2. On the eyewitness principle and the representation of movement and space on a plane see: E.H. Gombrich, Standards of Truth: The Arrested Image and the Moving Eye, in: The Image & the Eye, London 1999 (1982). ‘Walking around in a painting, I don’t want to stumble anywhere.’ ‘When I put a colour on canvas, it has to sink to its specific depth.’ ‘If a big, say concrete, wall is part of an image, I want its shape to be such, that I can read it as a motion instead of feeling its weight. Somehow I don’t like a dominating base.’ ‘I like working with a soft lightsource and an equally soft darksource.’
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Jurriaan Molenaar | BAUHAUS + GRAUHAUS Apr 20, 2024 - May 25, 2024 |
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Michael Tolloy | ANDROS + GYNE Feb 17, 2024 - Apr 06, 2024 |
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Idowu Oluwaseun | PEDESTAL Dec 09, 2023 - Feb 10, 2024 |
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SELECTION 2023 Nov 10, 2023 - Dec 02, 2023 |
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Harding Meyer | Audience Aug 26, 2023 - Nov 04, 2023 |
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Summer Break Jul 11, 2023 - Aug 22, 2023 |
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Flávia Junqueira | Symphony of Illusions Jun 10, 2023 - Jul 08, 2023 |
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Fransix Tenda Lomba | Historical Shock Apr 22, 2023 - Jun 03, 2023 |
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Till Freiwald | Echo Jan 28, 2023 - Mar 31, 2023 |
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SELECTION | Part 2 Dec 16, 2022 - Jan 21, 2023 |
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Daniel Heil | Wheel of Dharma Nov 05, 2022 - Dec 03, 2022 |
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Claudia Rogge | WARP and WEFT Aug 27, 2022 - Oct 29, 2022 |
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Éder Oliveira | Oposición Jun 24, 2022 - Jul 30, 2022 |
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Fábio Baroli | Where the wind turns May 06, 2022 - Jun 18, 2022 |
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Frank Bauer | Bilder vom Verschwinden Mar 12, 2022 - Apr 30, 2022 |
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Selection Feb 08, 2022 - Mar 05, 2022 |
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Harding Meyer | known unknowns Oct 29, 2021 - Dec 18, 2021 |
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Kate Waters | It takes one to know one Aug 27, 2021 - Oct 23, 2021 |
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Giacomo Costa | Atmospheres May 28, 2021 - Jul 03, 2021 |
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Idowu Oluwaseun | REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE: a synthesis of time and sound Oct 30, 2020 - Dec 12, 2020 |
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Peter Uka | Inner Frame Aug 28, 2020 - Oct 24, 2020 |
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Harding Meyer | new works Jun 05, 2020 - Jul 15, 2020 |
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Mary A. Kelly | Chair Mar 14, 2020 - May 30, 2020 |
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Michael Tolloy | Solid Solidarity Jan 17, 2020 - Feb 29, 2020 |
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Kate Waters | Love Shacks and other Hideouts Oct 18, 2019 - Jan 09, 2020 |
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Frank Bauer | Paths of Inaccuracy Aug 30, 2019 - Oct 12, 2019 |
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Christian Bazant-Hegemark | Kindness of Strangers Jun 07, 2019 - Jul 13, 2019 |
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Sandra Ackermann | Escape into your Reality May 03, 2019 - Jun 01, 2019 |
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Kay Kaul | Cloudbusting Mar 08, 2019 - Apr 27, 2019 |
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Jurriaan Molenaar | Fermate Jan 18, 2019 - Mar 02, 2019 |
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Harding Meyer / Humanize Oct 19, 2018 - Jan 12, 2019 |
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Mihoko Ogaki / Soft Landing Aug 31, 2018 - Oct 13, 2018 |
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Peter Uka / Fragment of the Present Passed Apr 13, 2018 - May 26, 2018 |
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Daniel Heil / Monologues Mar 09, 2018 - Apr 07, 2018 |
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Düsseldorf Photo Weekend 2018 Feb 16, 2018 - Feb 18, 2018 |
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Sandra Senn / Zwischen Zwei Meeren Jan 26, 2018 - Mar 03, 2018 |
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Frank Bauer / Die Gelassenheit der Dinge Nov 17, 2017 - Jan 20, 2018 |
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Kate Waters / Whistling In The Dark Sepr 01, 2017 - Nov 11, 2017 |
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Untitled Jul 12, 2017 - Aug 02, 2017 |
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Davide La Rocca / 13K ( Part 1 ) May 12, 2017 - Jun 27, 2017 |
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Sandra Ackermann / Lost in Nothingness Mar 24, 2017 - May 06, 2017 |
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Claudia Rogge / CONCENTRATION Jan 27, 2017 - Mar 18, 2017 |
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Christian Bazant - Hegemark / The Rise and Fall of Transformative Hopes and Expectations Nov 11, 2016 - Jan 21, 2017 |
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Harding Meyer / The Others Aug 26, 2016 - Nov 05, 2016 |
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Crossing Borders Jun 03, 2016 - Jul 15, 2016 |
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Sandra Senn / Flüchtiges Getriebe Apr 08, 2016 - May 21, 2016 |
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Corrado Zeni / Éloge de la fuite Nov 27, 2015 - Jan 09, 2016 |
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Claudia Rogge / PerSe Oct 16, 2015 - Nov 21, 2015 |
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Kate Waters // Tell it like it is Aug 28, 2015 - Oct 10, 2015 |
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Visions Of Sensory Space ( by Weightless Artists Association - SPARTNIC ) May 15, 2015 - Jul 04, 2015 |
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Sandra Ackermann / Wasteland Mar 13, 2015 - May 02, 2015 |
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Lost Scapes Jan 30, 2015 - Mar 07, 2015 |
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Christian Bazant-Hegemark / Calibrating Aesthetics Nov 14, 2014 - Jan 17, 2015 |
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Frank Bauer / Back to Basics Aug 29, 2014 - Nov 08, 2014 |
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Harding Meyer // recent paintings May 23, 2014 - Aug 23, 2014 |
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Till Freiwald - memoria Apr 11, 2014 - May 17, 2014 |
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Quadriennale Düsseldorf 2014 / Gallery Evening Apr 05, 2014 - Apr 05, 2014 |
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Giacomo Costa // Traces Nov 22, 2013 - Jan 11, 2013 |
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DC-Open Galleries: Matthias Danberg - Inventory by Appropriation Sepr 06, 2013 - Nov 16, 2013 |
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Christian Bazant-Hegemark // VOW OF SILENCE May 24, 2013 - Aug 20, 2013 |
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Corrado Zeni // Generation Why Apr 12, 2013 - May 18, 2013 |
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behind the Non-Colours Mar 22, 2013 - Apr 06, 2013 |
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Sandra Ackermann // Running to stand still Feb 15, 2013 - Mar 16, 2013 |
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Düsseldorf Photo Weekend 2013 Feb 01, 2013 - Feb 09, 2013 |
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Mihoko Ogaki // Star Tales - White Floating Nov 30, 2012 - Jan 31, 2013 |
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Claudia Rogge / Lost in Paradise Oct 12, 2012 - Nov 24, 2012 |
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Harding Meyer // features Sepr 07, 2012 - Oct 06, 2012 |
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Summer 2012 - Part 2 Aug 10, 2012 - Sepr 01, 2012 |
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Summer 2012 Jul 06, 2012 - Sepr 01, 2012 |
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Maria Friberg // The Painting Series May 11, 2012 - Jun 23, 2012 |
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Mary A. Kelly // Father & Child Mar 30, 2012 - May 06, 2012 |
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Maia Naveriani // Future Wolves and Chicks so far Feb 10, 2012 - Mar 24, 2012 |
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Düsseldorf Photo Weekend 2012 Feb 04, 2012 - Feb 08, 2012 |
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Kate Waters // The Air that I breathe Dec 09, 2011 - Jan 28, 2012 |
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Frank Bauer / ...den Wald vor lauter Bäumen.... Nov 04, 2011 - Dec 03, 2011 |
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Claudia Rogge // Final Friday Sepr 09, 2011 - Oct 29, 2011 |
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Davide La Rocca - STILLS May 27, 2011 - Jul 16, 2011 |
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Giacomo Costa // Post Natural Apr 01, 2011 - May 21, 2011 |
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Harding Meyer - to be a real vision Feb 18, 2011 - Mar 26, 2011 |
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Shannon Rankin - Disperse / Displace Dec 03, 2010 - Feb 12, 2011 |
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Sandra Ackermann // I look inside you Oct 15, 2010 - Nov 27, 2010 |
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Amparo Sard / AT THE IMPASSE Sepr 03, 2010 - Oct 09, 2010 |
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Kate Waters // The Land of Kubla Khan Jun 11, 2010 - Jul 17, 2010 |
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Jurriaan Molenaar // Lessness Apr 30, 2010 - Jun 05, 2010 |
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Claudia Rogge // The Paradise of the Onlooker Mar 05, 2010 - Apr 24, 2010 |
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Ivonne Thein // incredible me Jan 22, 2010 - Feb 27, 2010 |
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Frank Bauer // Jet Set Nov 27, 2009 - Jan 15, 2010 |
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Michael Koch // forever more Oct 23, 2009 - Nov 21, 2009 |
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Masaharu Sato // SIGNS Sepr 04, 2009 - Oct 17, 2009 |
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Harding Meyer // blind date Jun 19, 2009 - Aug 22, 2009 |
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Maria Friberg // way ahead Apr 24, 2009 - Jun 13, 2009 |
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Claudia Rogge // Isolation ( aus: Segment 8 - die Blasen der Gesellschaft) Mar 06, 2009 - Apr 18, 2009 |
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Claudia Rogge - The Opening Mar 06, 2009 - Apr 18, 2009 |
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JoJo Tillmann // What you see is what you get Jan 30, 2009 - Feb 28, 2009 |
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Sandra Ackermann // Die Wirklichkeit ist nicht die Wahrheit Nov 21, 2008 - Jan 24, 2009 |
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Kate Waters - Getting used to the 21st Century Oct 10, 2008 - Nov 15, 2008 |
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Mihoko Ogaki - Milky Ways Sepr 04, 2008 - Oct 04, 2008 |
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Summer 2008 // Painting Aug 12, 2008 - Aug 30, 2008 |
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Silke Rehberg: Stationen 1,4,6,7,11,12,13,14 Jun 13, 2008 - Jul 12, 2008 |
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Maia Naveriani: At home with good ideas May 09, 2008 - Jun 07, 2008 |
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Justin Richel: Rise and Fall Apr 04, 2008 - May 03, 2008 |
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Davide La Rocca - Strange Object Feb 08, 2008 - Mar 28, 2008 |
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Frank Bauer: AkikoAlinaAlinkaAndrew.... Nov 30, 2007 - Feb 02, 2008 |
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Maria Friberg: Fallout Oct 12, 2007 - Nov 24, 2007 |
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Harding Meyer / in sight Sepr 06, 2007 - Oct 11, 2007 |
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SUMMER '07 Jul 17, 2007 - Sepr 01, 2007 |
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Kay Kaul - Wasserfarben Jun 15, 2007 - Jul 14, 2007 |
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Sandra Ackermann - Point Blank Mar 02, 2007 - Apr 28, 2007 |
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Tamara K.E.: pioneers -none of us and somewhere else Jan 19, 2007 - Feb 24, 2007 |
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Till Freiwald Nov 17, 2006 - Jan 13, 2007 |
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Claudia Rogge: U N I F O R M Sepr 01, 2006 - Nov 11, 2006 |
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Kate Waters: Killing Time May 05, 2006 - Jun 17, 2006 |
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Katia Bourdarel: The Flesh of Fairy Tales Mar 31, 2006 - Apr 29, 2006 |
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Mihoko Ogaki Feb 10, 2006 - Mar 18, 2006 |
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Silke Rehberg: RICOMINCIARE DAL CORPO Jan 27, 2006 - Feb 26, 2006 |
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Sandra Ackermann Dec 08, 2005 - Jan 15, 2006 |
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Corrado Zeni Dec 04, 2005 - Jan 11, 2006 |
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Frank Bauer Nov 18, 2005 - Jan 15, 2006 |
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Harding Meyer Oct 07, 2005 - Nov 12, 2005 |
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AUFTAKT Sepr 02, 2005 - Oct 01, 2005 |
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Claudia Rogge: Rapport Jun 17, 2005 - Jul 20, 2005 |
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May 13, 2005 - Jun 11, 2005 |
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Kate Waters: Solo-Exhibition in the Gallery Thomas Cohn, Sao Paulo Apr 16, 2005 - May 20, 2005 |
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Vittorio Gui: FROZEN MOMENTS Apr 08, 2005 - May 07, 2005 |
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Kay Kaul - ARTSCAPES Apr 03, 2005 - May 29, 2005 |
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SEO Geheimnisvoller Blick Mar 04, 2005 - Apr 02, 2005 |
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Claudia van Koolwijk at Museum Bochum Feb 26, 2005 - Apr 17, 2005 |
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Corrado Zeni - Six Degrees of Separation Nov 26, 2004 - Jan 15, 2005 |
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Maia Naveriani: What' s the difference between ME and YOU? Oct 15, 2004 - Nov 20, 2004 |
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Tamara K.E.: MAD DONNA AND DONNA CORLEONE Sepr 03, 2004 - Oct 09, 2004 |
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Davide La Rocca: Real Vision Reflex Jun 12, 2004 - Jul 17, 2004 |
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Kay Kaul COLLECTORSCAPES Apr 23, 2004 - Jun 05, 2004 |