Artists

Stefan Rinck, Siegfried Anzinger, Daniel Grüttner

Press release

"The history of art is the history of transgressions." – Erwin Panofsky

GOLESTANI is pleased to announce a new exhibition featuring works by Siegfried Anzinger, Daniel Grüttner, and Stefan Rinck, engaging with the mediums of painting and sculpture and exploring the question of the boundaries of art. The public is warmly invited to the exhibition opening on Friday, 5 September, at the gallery.

Opening Reception
Friday, 5 September 2025, 6–9 pm
Collenbachstraße 45, 40476 Düsseldorf

Over the past centuries, the boundaries of art have played a crucial role: they helped to define art, determine its value, and establish its position within social hierarchies and cultural discourses. In aesthetics, the concept of boundaries can be understood as a form of categorisation and structuring that offers orientation to the viewer, while at the same time always leaving space for the question of their mutability.

Since classical antiquity—when the foundations of later Western conceptions of art were laid—painting and sculpture have been regarded as two equally fundamental yet distinctly different forms of expression. With the dawn of the early modern era, the discourse surrounding the value and status of the artistic disciplines ignited, culminating in the Paragone: the contest over which art form should take precedence. In this debate, artists and theorists sought to define and understand the strengths and limitations of both mediums, influencing not only artistic production of the time but also the way art was perceived within society.

While in classical antiquity sculpture was held in particularly high esteem for its ability to represent the human body in its idealised form, painting later came to be considered superior for its capacity to create the illusion of space and to evoke deeper emotional and intellectual responses. Painters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Giorgio Vasari emphasised the importance of perspective and the representation of human experience through colour and light. In his Vite, Vasari wrote: “Painting is the highest art because it is capable of reproducing the appearances of the world on canvas and offering viewers illusionistic experiences.” For Vasari, the value of painting lay above all in its ability to conjure the illusion of space and light—qualities that distinguished it from sculpture. He concluded: “Painting is the royal art, for it can imitate nature in the image while enjoying the freedom to idealise it, to transform the visible world beyond the limits of reality.”

Sculpture, by contrast, was valued for its physical presence and materiality, for its ability to directly shape space by occupying it with three-dimensional form. Sculptors such as Michelangelo regarded their works as the pinnacle of humanity’s mastery over form and volume. The tactile quality and spatial relationship of sculpture rendered it more tangible, more “real.”

In modern times, art underwent radical transformation, driven by the emergence of new movements and techniques. The traditional rivalry between painting and sculpture was no longer at the forefront. Instead, many artists began to question and test the boundaries between disciplines, often seeking to dissolve them altogether. The pursuit of hybrid forms and cross-media approaches replaced the ideal of the “pure” genre; the everyday entered art, displacing its claim to timelessness. The French philosopher Michel Foucault explored how aesthetic practices themselves could challenge established boundaries and norms, underscoring the role of art as a form of resistance against the existing order—art, he argued, could expand the possibilities of subjectivity and worldview by questioning the fixed social and cultural “boundaries” of perception and meaning.

With works by Siegfried Anzinger, Daniel Grüttner, and Stefan Rinck, the exhibition brings painting and sculpture into dialogue, highlighting the specific qualities and strengths of each without erasing their differences. It invites viewers to reflect on the boundaries of art—which have played a significant role for centuries—while celebrating the diversity of artistic expression today.