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Bernd Wolf LXX
Retrospective on the occasion of the 70th anniversary

About the unintentional doing and the visible invisible

The Palais für aktuelle Kunst in Glückstadt is showing a comprehensive retrospective of the impressive paintings of Bernd Wolf (1953-2010) until July 16.

In his main work, the Berlin artist radically returns to the origins of painting by applying his paint with his bare hands, pure and without intention and on the canvases. Color is the very own medium of painting, the hands are our first tools. In his work, Wolf was increasingly concerned with intuitively pushing the willful direction of the artist into the background and allowing the painting to emerge as if by itself.

How difficult it is to truly enter the creative state of purposelessness is documented in the documentary film, Die händische Spur, very carefully re-edited by Julia Suermont, which accompanies the artist at work in his studio.
Bernd Wolf allows structures to emerge that can otherwise only be produced by natural processes. Like atmospheric condensations, the whole of the thing literally leaps out of his paintings: harmony and turmoil, light and shadow, or even a letting go and resting in color become a possible point of intersection for viewer and artist. Wolf’s works have an effect. His paintings are batteries that have been charged by the artist and make their energy available to the viewer. In doing so, we recognize the phenomenon of scale. We can read the images as starry mists, continental plates, conflagrations, or patterns of movement on wind-swept landscapes, but also on a micro scale, as a journey through blood vessels, for example, as microscopic colorings of cell structures, or on a subatomic, energetic level. The pictures, painted without intention, awaken, like cloud pictures, a wealth of associations. In this going in we change our size and that of the picture.

The transition from the material to the immaterial occupied Bernd Wolf together with the question: When does the spirit shoot into matter? The essence of art for him was transcendence. Thus his paintings are only complete when they have found their viewers.

In addition to the large-format unintentional works, the retrospective shows painted miniatures from the 80s, as well as selected examples of his multi-layered monotypes from the early 90s, also the famous series of high-speed drawings dead can dance and some of his very subtle, erotic lightpaints from 2004.

His works are represented in museums and public and private collections.

The fact that the exhibition can be shown in Glückstadt is thanks to the art-minded collector couple Sui-Dschen and Hans-Paul Mattke from the organic bakery Moin, who have already made outstanding art events in Glückstadt several times.

A catalog will be published to accompany the exhibition.
Special guided tours on 13 and 14 May, each at 15:30 h.