Artists

Arthur Löwen

Press release

Taking the Italian formula as its point of departure, Arthur Löwen’s new solo exhibition explores painting as both a repeatable procedure and an individual recipe. His practice is grounded in a self-developed set of techniques, gestures, and signs that can be recombined and developed in constantly shifting configurations. The new body of work sees established procedures and familiar components of Löwen’s visual vocabulary, such as mirror writing, enter into dialogue with new forms and motifs. Index (Poly) (2026) crystallizes many of the concerns that run throughout the exhibition. Formulaic in character, it brings together characteristic methods and pictorial devices while opening them up to new possibilities through the introduction of additional forms. The white plastic Monobloc chair introduces a new motif to the work that can be interpreted as a symbol of everyday life, globalization, and mass production. Based on a photograph, it was transferred onto the canvas in reverse using an experimental transfer-printing process. At the same time, traces of a tumbling Monobloc point to a specific physical action. The chair thus functions not only as a cultural symbol but also as an indexical trace. Its imprint refers to an actual event, making visible the emergence of meaning within the painting process itself. Löwen’s works do not merely depict; rather, they investigate how painting generates its own visual vocabulary through writing, gesture, and imprint. This continually evolving constellation of recurring and newly emerging forms is understood in the exhibition as a painterly formula. – Katrin Rollmann Arthur Löwen‘s process involves applying multiple layers of paint and placing their still-wet surface onto an absorbent cloth. By working the canvas from the back, he sets in motion processes of imprinting, reversing, and transferring. These processes produce a mirror image on the front of the canvas, leaving behind painterly, gestural, and bodily traces.