„Surface as Field“ understands painting not as a closed surface, but as an operative terrain—as a place where material, gesture, and structure enter into an open relationship. The surface does not work as a boundary, but as a space for action in which densification, blank spaces, and structures interact with one another.
In Pia Fries’ works, layers of color, superimpositions, and dynamic interventions form the basis of the painting’s structure. The paint condenses into relief-like formations, so that the pictorial space can be physically experienced rather than illusionistic. The white empty spaces of the painting’s background are visible and function as an active counter-space so that the surface unfolds tensions in which color and emptiness enter into a relationship.
Jutta Haeckel destabilizes the traditional closed nature of the canvas by intervening in the structure of the surface. Removed threads, perforations, and working at the front and back of the canvas allow the color to pass through, shift, or seep away. These interventions create a permeable structure in which the structure itself becomes the carrier of the image. Here, the surface becomes an active carrier of the pictorial effect, not a background.
Angelika J. Trojnarski develops her work from her exploration of physical forces and ecological relationships. She translates these questions into painting, working with materials such as paint, lead, soot, and paper fragments. The individual elements remain recognizable, but are interrelated. Layering and superimposition create an image surface that makes processes such as compression, displacement, and transformation visible. The canvas thus becomes a place where natural phenomena are not depicted, but can be experienced.
The exhibition presents three contemporary artistic positions that understand painting not as representation but as process. Here, the surface appears not as a passive carrier but as a place where materiality, structure, and perception intertwine. Abstraction and figuration are not opposites, but different manifestations of a processual understanding of the concept of the painting.
