Category Archives: 2023

Molly Thomson and Franziska Reinbothe

28. October.2023 – 11. November.2023 Preview Thursday 26.10.2023

Molly Thomson

Molly Thomson, Slot and block Medium: Acrylic on panel construction Size: 42 x 40 x 10 cm 2023

My conversation is with the object of the painting and with its hybrid identities. Beginning most often with the simple fact of the rectangular painting panel I place myself in the position of both agent and observer, using acts of cutting, reassembling and pouring to re-form – and respond to – each piece. I am interested not only in the layered facade that is presented, but also in the fact that the painting casts and contains shadows. There is always a delicate balance between control and the unpredictable behaviour of the object, and the process advances by slow increments, mis-steps and revisions. Occasionally work descends from the wall and demands space or even mobility. There is play and sometimes there is humour.

Current work continues to evolve through the setting of a series of problems and displacements in each structure. Interior spaces are often implicated, even if only glimpsed through the smallest of openings, and I am interested in the quiet question that such breaks in the facade might pose. Some paintings may quietly allude to what cannot or shouldn’t be seen, while others flex their joints or extend their surfaces with a touch more expansiveness. Often it can seem to me that order is provisional – something to be tampered with.

Molly Thomson, Red, with opening Medium: Acrylic on panel construction Size: 37 x 46 x 5 cm 2022
Molly Thomson, Cavity Medium: Acrylic on panel construction Size: 34 x 23 x 5 cm 2023

Franziska Reinbothe

Franziska Reinbothe, Fächer,2023, ca.90x50x12 cm, acrylic on canvas

In painting, I am interested in what usually remains hidden: the back of a picture and its edges. In order to make them visible, I compress canvases, expose stretcher frames or do without them altogether. I stretch, fold, break, cut through and/or sew up my paintings after the painting process is complete. Some of them then protrude far into the room, others have already completely detached themselves from the wall.

Curiosity and impulsiveness, not iconoclasm, are my driving forces – and chance and accident lie close together in my artistic work.

I do not work project-based, but continuously in the process. In doing so, I trust in the making, instead of making decisions that restrict me in advance. What happens if I break the strips of the painting? And what if I subsequently repair them? And what will the picture look like if I use transparent chiffon fabric instead of paint, for example? No matter which of the previous and upcoming image-finding strategies I use: It is always about contemporary painting, its means and possibilities.

Franziska Reinbothe, n.T. 2019/22, ca 62x44x10 cm, acrylic on canvas
Franziska Reinbothe, n.T., 2015/22, ca. 93x72x20 cm, ball pen, spray paint and acrylic on canvas

opening times Saturday 14-18 and by appointment

Simon Callery and Georg Schmidt

RAUMX London 12.05 – 27.05.2023 Preview Thursday 11.05.2023

Simon Callery, Stura; 2021

Simon Callery

I am a painter. In order to understand what painting can do today I have made works that exist on the margins of what can be understood as painting. I have written the word ‘INVERT’ on my studio wall to remind me every day that I must subvert the established conventions of image-based painting if I want to find new roles and develop new forms of painting. It is my intention that an encounter with one of my paintings is as much for the body as it is for the eye.

I have worked in the landscape alongside field archaeologists on many projects. What I have learnt there I have applied to works made in the urban environment and developed in studio based work. The visceral qualities of the excavation sites have made me sensitive to the physical qualities of landscape and the relationship of material to time.

The paintings share spatial qualities we associate with sculpture and I embrace it. We live in image dominant cultures and it is possible to say that the stress on the visual in everyday life inevitable suppresses the other senses. I am working to give painting a material body and as a consequence, a better awareness of our own.

Simon Callery, Country Register, 2018
  • born London
  • Graduated from Cardiff College of Art 1983
  • Has shown extensively in the UK and internationally since 1990s.
  • Public collections include: Arts Council Collection, London; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo. Birmingham Museums Trust. British Museum. European Investement Bank, Luxembourg. Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris. Nottingham Trent University. Stanhope plc. Tate
  • Forthcoming shows 2023: Inauguration Lo Brutto Stadl, Paris. Arcadia for all? Rethinking Landscape Painting now. Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds. Simon Callery & Vlatka Horvat, Annex14, Zuerich. Space as Duty of Care, Studio G7,Bologna. Ouverture, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. Simon Callery & Georg Schmidt, RAUMX-London. Simon Callery.Contact paintings, CAB, Burgos. The Surface of Place and the Depth of Place . Rudolfinum, Prague.
Simon Callery, Second Red Mantle, 2021

Georg Schmidt

Georg Schmidt, Higgs, 2018

The exchange with researchers from the field of quantum physics has had an influence on my painterly reflections for some time. At the beginning of this discussion was the question of what the Higgs field is all about. The description of an energetic field struck me, not directly perceptible to us, but with significant effects on our world. It seemed to me as if I had encountered here the paraphrase of an underpainting, as it has been used in painting for centuries. Color as underpainting can be like a Higgs field in the picture as a force field effective. While painting, I am preoccupied with this principle of layering, spatially dynamic processes of colourful relationships that are not commensurable or measurably defined in a state. Further concepts, such as chaos and order, determination and coincidence as well as interactions, spatial movements, dimension and proportions I reflected with the pictorial means of painting. Like a tapestry of sound, this encounter with the theme of quantum physics accompanied me in the studio.

Georg Schmidt, Studio Duo, 2022
Georg Schmidt, EA9, 2021 (Watercolour)
  • Born               Lübeck, Germany
  • 1985-1989    Philosophie, Universität Hamburg
  • ab 1986         Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg
  • ab 1994         Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
  • 1995               graduated as master student with Gotthard Graubner,
                            lives and works in Cologne and at the
                            Raketenstation, Stiftung Insel Hombroich
  • Solo Exhibitions (Selection)
  • 2022               „Und dein Grün“,Kunstraum K634, Köln
  • 2019               Geschichte, Kopfermann Fuhrmann Stiftung, Düsseldorf
  • 2018               Lesende, Galerie Reul, Bonn
  • 2017               Tide, Kunstverein in der Kunsthalle Schweinfurt (K)
  • 2016               Horizont, Galerie Weigmann, Düsseldorf
  • 2015              Flutmarke, Galerie Reul, Bonn
  • 2021/22         Mentor in the Art Mentorship NRW
  • seit 2017       Annual teaching assignments on the subject of color, FB Architektur, Alanushochschule
  • Privat and public Collections i.a.:Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. Kunsthalle Lübeck. Kunstakademie Düsseldorf