Autonomous painting

It is impossible to overlook the proximity of Paul Schwer’s works to monochrome or colour painting, but above all to minimal art. The detachment of painting from its traditional locale is staged in an emphatically clear manner. The image detaches itself from the wall, becomes an object and fo­cuses thematically upon the dissolution of the very material of the »canvas« itself: where the painting and the wall once posed question of each other, the painting now ­enters into a dialogue with the space itself. Schwer’s works vehemently insist upon their physical body, detach themselves from the wall, cast shadows and are simultaneously both light and colour, pictorial surface and space. They are always paintings, at all times emphatically more than just objects in the given space, they thrive in considerable measure from the moment of enfolding of the image and real space, of the sculptural, the architectural and the illusion of space. This book collates the first broad survey by this Heerich student born in 1951, which was shown in the exhibition at the ­museum gegenstandsfreier kunst in Otterndorf.

Exhibition:
Kunstverein Ulm, 22/1–11/3/2012