On view Oct 14, 2023 - July 1, 2024 at the Kuntsmuseum Gelsenkirchen
The exhibition Colours and Lines in Motion brings together three abstract artists to foster a dialogue spanning an arc from the mid-twentieth century to the recent past. A concentration on colours, lines and planes along with the radical rejection of any manner of representationalism describe the narrative thread that is shared by Verena Loewensberg, Imran Mir and Anton Stankowski. All three also have in common their personal exchange with the artist and designer Max Bill. Nonetheless, in each case their works testify to a respectively individual vocabulary of abstraction that fuse local cultural influences and biographical circumstances, but also contemporary history.
With one focus of its collection directed at concrete art in the milieu surrounding Anton Stankowski – recently expanded by the new acquisition of a spectacular work by Verena Loewensberg – the Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen is the first German institution to show works by the Pakistani artist Imran Mir. As with Stankowski, Mir’s formal approach is apparent both in his painting and his graphic design. Systematics, seriality and geometry play as much of a role in Mir’s work as does his break with all forms of rigid order. This gives rise to freer pictorial compositions with lyrical, musical and cosmic references that also suggest comparisons to Verena Loewensberg. The exhibition offers visitors a new perspective on the broad universe of non-representational art. Coursing around this universe are numerous artists from all over the world whose formal language is embedded in the narrative of modernism, yet without necessarily identifying with the Western canon.