Herbert Egl and Dorothea Schulz

HERBERT EGL – I like Chinese

and

DOROTHEA SCHULZ – Selbstgesprächsfetzen

I like Chinese – Herbert Egl’s exhibition takes one of his culinary preferences as an opportunity to reveal a deeply picturesque one. At least the work of the same name reveals a clear reference to Far Eastern calligraphy: an unprimed canvas on which black strings draw expressive strips, over which white strips of thick acrylic, whose shape and arrangement are actually reminiscent of Chinese characters. Such overlays or layers play a central role in Egl’s most recent paintings. In doing so, he does not make the visible disappear but only makes things visible in the spaces in between. In the ice landscape format, like an ice scraper, he reveals a photo lying under the thick acrylic. In the large-format tablecloth painting, the “combed” acrylic layer looks like a kind of gauze or gauze, through the fabric of which the painting below shines through. With astonishing clarity, Herbert Egl manages to walk the fine line between transcendence and physicality without tipping over to either side. That is clearly one of his painterly preferences and preferences.

Dorothea Schulz’s art almost always seeks direct confrontation with people. Your work speaks to us, sometimes it speaks to us, in some cases, it emerges from the conversation. From this constellation, the workgroups of conversation drawings (from 2006), court drawings (2007/08), and indulgence drawings (2012) have emerged from this constellation. Located between image and text, between truth and poetry, between looking, reading, and listening, Dorothea Schulz found a visual language that is as poetic as it is prosaic. In her latest group of works, Dorothea Schulz looks, speaks, and listens to herself for the first time. What emerges are scraps of self-talk that appear to be thrown away quickly, but have a long-lasting effect: a surface of color that appears “too salmon”; a “toothbrush massacre” in the undergrowth; a “sorry” that fades away repetitively. Schulz plays with word images and forms sentences with words that do not make sense at first glance. A second look looks for the deeper ground in the gouaches and returns to the word. The artist’s self-talk remains erratic. But that’s exactly why we want to know exactly.