Artists

Ulrich Erben

Press release

It may be the afternoon. Your gaze is led out of an interior space. One might say that it falls through a square opening and gets intercepted by a field of colour. Your gaze does not come to rest there. It meanders. Although this field of colour appears to be a brilliant, light blue when viewed from a distance, a homogenous surface that melts out of its own luminosity, further nuances reveal themselves when it is viewed up close. Barely visible, other colours shimmer through the blue when it is viewed from up close: they intensify and separate from one another, forming a translucent blend that in turn changes its optical temperature from one corner of the visual field to another corner. Wavy lines in a reddish brown hue nestle against the blue field of colour on all four sides, leading your gaze to its edges and thereby back to the contours of the square, to the interior space. An interpretation of Untitled (Lights), 2026 (Fig. 1) by Ulrich Erben. This painting is part of a series that Ulrich Erben is presenting for the first time in his solo exhibition Interplay at Sies + Höke. It brings together pictorial aspects that the artist, who was born in Düsseldorf in 1940, has explored for several decades through monochrome painting, geometric abstraction and colour field painting. Erben’s varied use of gradual colour gradients appears in the compositions of his new works in the form of an echo of his earlier fascination with light phenomena, which extends beyond painting to light installations and photography in his oeuvre. A focal point of his work is how paint can be used to dissolve space into surface and, vice versa, to transform surface into space. In the late 1960s, Ulrich Erben started to rethink perspective and geometry in his group of works known as the Weißen Bilder (White Paintings), moving towards a style in which a surface was built up using numerous layers of paint, transposing this surface into a dimension characterised by depth of colour. The interconnection of space and surface through the translucency of colour has also led to the expansion of Erben’s concept of a picture in his work. In the 1970s, for example, the concept of a “picture within a picture” became a concrete subject within his work. Erben began to integrate the idea of marginal zones into his painting. These marginal zones form a frame around the inner field of the picture and, for example through colour gradation, highlight the pictorial quality of the painting. Works such as Untitled (Shadow), 2026 (Fig. 2), exhibited at the Sies + Höke gallery, make reference to Erben’s early pictorial compositions. In this work, the inner field of the picture suggests a shadowy depth thanks to a homogenous gradient of light and shadow: this depth guides us into the picture like a door opening in the darkness to reveal a barely-perceptible glimpse of light. In his previous exhibition at the gallery, 12 Bilder für einen Raum (12 Paintings for One Space), Ulrich Erben showcased twelve vertically-oriented paintings: panels in shades of black and white, each composed of two pictorial zones arranged one above the other. The acrylic paint, shifting between light and dark, gives the impression that the canvas itself is caving in or bulging out. One of these paintings, Untitled (One another), 2026 (Fig. 3) is now also part of the exhibition Interplay to make reference to the earlier exhibition. Erben’s method of shaping the appearance of an artwork using elements which shine out and elements which shrink back can often be seen in his work. This becomes evident in the painting Untitled (Backlight), 2024 (Fig. 4) in which he extends the composition using two vertical marginal zones, thus heightening the fluidity of the colour fields and the interplay between them. The strict geometric principles that are an inherent component of Ulrich Erben’s paintings meet a gestural signature in his new works. In their interplay, the resting/flowing brushstrokes and animated brushstrokes create compositions characterised by precise contours, human traces and surreal shrouds and shadows. They are always in a relationship with one another but the nature of that relationship remains open to interpretation: does the painting Untitled (Opposite), 2026 (Fig. 5) end or begin with a narrow white stripe and does it tell the beginning or the end of the story? The motifs and styles in Ulrich Erben’s paintings have a cyclical effect. The continuous transition between light and dark, cold and warm, gleaming precision and soft, drifting movement is reminiscent of a long journey between day and night or perhaps the changing of the light between the north and south of the Alps, where Erben has lived and worked for many years, in Düsseldorf and in Bagnoregio, Italy. It is the start of November. As is customary in his work, Ulrich Erben painted his works for the Interplay exhibition using many fine layers, bringing the pictures into dialogue with one another as early as during the painting process. The path to them leads to the interior. But the gaze is led out of an interior space. Text by Dr. Christina Irrgang About Ulrich Erben Ulrich Erben (*1940) is a master of reduction. His works are characterized by his virtuoso use of colour and light.