23.08.–23.09.1990

The concept of the exhibition is based on a confrontation of 12 so-called reworked pictures by Raimer Jochims with a collection of selected works of art history stemming from different epochs and cultures, which function as models for Jochims.

The reworked pictures were created between 1974 and 1986. From 1986 to 1988, Jochims' concept of colour, expressed in these pictures, radically changed: until then, chromatic modulations took place in details and with very little contrast; a calm overall effect stressing the contour of the picture was the goal. Jochims investigated the formal language and syntax of non-rectangular picture-formats. In 1986, he began increasing the contrasts and modulating on a larger scale; sequences emerged, and the contours became more vivid.

From 1987 to 1989, Jochims reworked almost all of the older pictures he still possessed. Many had already been published. He had discovered room to move, consisting in the difference between minimal and maximum colour contrasts in respect to a certain form. In reworking the older pictures, intensification was tested and limits were approached. Jochims confronts this group of works with a selection of objects and drawings which he holds in high esteem, and which have given formal and contentual orientation to his works.

Examples of painting were excluded, as this would have gone beyond the scope of the exhibition. Instead, six drawings of classical modernism were chosen, by Seurat, Cézanne, Klee, Mondrian, Matisse, and Morandi, as well as an ink drawing by Hakuin Ekaku, a leading Japanese Zen master from the 18th century - all of them examples of painting in black and white.

The 13 three-dimensional objects shown in the exhibition display a wide historical spectrum of art and cultural history in the form of select, high-quality pieces. These range from a hand-axe of the Palaeolithic Age, an Egyptian stone bowl from the 3rd century BC, a Peruvian Mocha double-figure from the first century, the fragment of a Thai Buddha statue from the Middle Ages, to Brancusi's Le Nouveau-né from the first decade of the 20th century.

Photos: Katrin Schilling