PAINTING COLOR WITHOUT COLOR

Analogous to a Zen-Buddhist Koan, Bernd Wolf’s achromatic color paintings attempt to square the circle. Using repetition as confirmation and cancellation, the new arises from difference, from doing and then doing again. Sweeping brushstrokes meander through each picture. Starting from white, painted over in black and then again in white, the ranks of the black and white pigments are orchestrated in their encounter with each other. Robbed of the seductive power of colorfulness, Wolf here goes to the limits of the color space and bares pure painting structure. (1984)