Walking the Line 40, (Grenzgaenge) 40 Painting

An almost circular area in the center is given a rhythm by deep red brush strokes that strive outwards from the center. From the outside, this is surrounded by midnight blue color waves that seem to be moving in the opposite direction towards the center. In the border area of the circular shape, the contrasting color movements meet and mix into a frayed, blurred transition zone. The central circular area widens out at the bottom to form a kind of neck that is cut off from the lower edge of the canvas. The composition also plays with possible associations: an abstract head, a concise figurative counterpart – vis à vis? In this respect, too, it is a border crossing, a tightrope walk. But the boundary line is in the process of dissolving. Even friends of abstract and concrete art occasionally get in the way of the automatism of interpretation - the need to classify and understand what is seen. It's all about colors, shapes and movement structures on a canvas. Everything else is just in the "eye of the beholder"? Normally we perceive shapes as closed figures against a background. But what happens when a line on a square screen divides it into two equal areas and neither of them is the dominant figure or one and then the other seems to emerge alternately in the course of viewing (tilting figure)? Our gaze wanders along the border line again and again. The two surface forms intertwine – similar to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with the canvas showing only a small part of a potentially much larger whole.