Review

The current exhibition of the Schlichtenmaier Gallery is dedicated to the non-objective image, which has been deliberately called 'concrete' for over 100 years. Propagated by the Constructivists at the beginning of the 20th century, concretion experienced a heyday in the last third of the century, especially in Switzerland and Germany, but also in Hungary, and also numerous followers. The rational foundation laid by the information aesthete, philosopher and mathematician Max Bense became increasingly emotionalized into the present currents. Originally, it was about nothing less than proving that color and form were enough to be concrete. The former 'abstract' became the new 'concrete': color and form were also as real as any supposedly real subject. The concretists opposed both superficially representational and gestural-abstract art. For them, the picture became a "thinking thing" (Kurt Leonhardt). Just as the concrete poets - including Bense - opened themselves up to experimentation through the play of language and words, the artists were also open to playing with colors and forms. This did not stop at subjectively enriching or disturbing the geometric order. Max Bill wrote: "... concrete art can also make use of a-geometric, amorphous elements, i.e. it can draw its form of representation from other spheres than geometry or mathematical thinking, and as far as it is the realization of a certain, objectively ascertainable idea ..., it is concrete painting or sculpture." Concrete art is of this world without ifs and buts. And its representatives make tangible how lively their interest in our world of appearance is, on this side and beyond the ratio.


Artists of the exhibition
Hiromi Akiyama, Gerlinde Beck, Bernd Berner, Roberto Cordone, Walter Dexel, Thomas Deyle, Rolf-Gunter Dienst, Adolf Fleischmann, Günther Förg, Christoph Freimann, Günter Fruhtrunk, Winfred Gaul, Hermann Glöckner, Otto Herbert Hajek, Erich Hauser, Günther C. Kirchberger, Horst Kuhnert, Camill Leberer, Thomas Lenk, Richard Paul Lohse, Armin Martinmüller, Almir Mavignier, Georg Karl Pfahler, Platino, Lothar Quinte, Hans Peter Reuter, Sára Sebestyén, Peter Sehringer, Reiner Seliger, Anton Stankowski, Hans Steinbrenner, Anna Tatarczyk, Victor Vasarely, Gianfranco Zappettini