Abstraction That Sets the Eye in Motion

Antwerpener Straße 52 in Cologne’s Belgian Quarter: Galerie Christian Lethert has occupied this late nineteenth-century building since 2017. Photographed on 14 October 2019. Photo: Asperatus / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The façade at Antwerpener Straße 52 reveals little of the questions explored behind it. Galerie Christian Lethert has occupied this late nineteenth-century building in Cologne since 2017; it was founded in 2006 just a few doors away. Running until 16 October, its anniversary exhibition brings together all 17 artists in its programme. What interests me about the occasion is less the round number than the promise of such a gathering: can a recognisable artistic position develop over twenty years without the works eventually doing little more than fulfil the expectations attached to it? The gallery’s abstract and minimalist orientation provides a framework. The individual practices keep it permeable.

Even the relationship between colour and space resists a single definition here. Imi Knoebel’s Figur H 145 (1986) carries colour on wood and asserts a physical extent that reaches beyond the conventional pictorial rectangle. Lutz Fritsch’s Goldene Zeiten: Oktober (2026), executed in lacquer on aluminium, introduces a different material emphasis. In Rana Begum’s work, the relationship between colour, light and spatial perception becomes the subject of an encounter that changes with the viewer’s position. Her No. 639 L Mesh (2015) brings painted stainless steel into this relationship. Looking at such works together means considering one’s own position as well: colour has a support, a spatial effect and conditions under which it becomes visible.

Natascha Schmitten and Daniel Lergon take this question into the surface itself. Schmitten’s Butterfly effect (2026) uses ink and oil on nylon. The fabric allows an interplay between translucency and density; the support participates in the formation of pictorial space rather than disappearing behind the paint. Lergon’s untitled work from 2026 combines retroreflective pigment and Prussian blue with acrylic on a layer of earth on canvas. His investigation of light and material reminds us how little about a surface can be taken for granted. For me, this is one of the productive demands of such art: a photographic reproduction can record its appearance, but can convey the conditions of that appearance only to a limited extent.

Perception, however, is not always a matter of controlled order. Alicia Viebrock’s Lamia (2026) brings ink, acrylic and oil into a painting whose gestural energy negotiates between deliberate placement and intuitive movement. Gereon Krebber’s glazed ceramic Plöppi (2026) belongs to a sculptural practice in which biomorphic forms and grotesque associations bring attraction and unease together. These positions, in particular, prevent the programme from settling into an overly smooth understanding of abstraction. They invite the question of how much disturbance a form can accommodate while retaining its tension.

A different intensity emerges in the work of Jill Baroff and Richard Tuttle. Baroff’s Hurricane Ian (2022–2023), in ink on Japanese Gampi paper, belongs to a practice that brings close observation, time and an exceptional sensitivity to material into relation. Tuttle is represented by Almost Sky (2026), a picture scroll printed on Washi and housed in a paulownia box. The format itself suggests an encounter unfolding over time: a scroll can be revealed gradually. Attention acquires a different duration here from that devoted to a picture seemingly grasped at a glance. The significance of a work cannot, therefore, be reliably measured by its size.

What makes this exhibition interesting for collecting, in my view, is precisely the variety of these demands. A work that responds to light, a painting on translucent fabric and a picture scroll require different forms of engagement. Acquiring them also means taking on the task of making their perception possible, repeatedly. The historic façade in our photograph identifies the place where such relationships can develop: between works, between generations, and between artists and their audiences. Whether a gallery’s programme acquires lasting cultural significance depends on how open those relationships remain. An anniversary offers an opportunity to test that openness against the works themselves.

Exhibition: 20 Jahre Galerie Christian Lethert
Dates: 5 September–16 October 2026
Venue: Galerie Christian Lethert, Antwerpener Straße 52, 50672 Cologne, Germany
Participating artists: Jill Baroff, Rana Begum, Szelit Cheung, Henrik Eiben, Pius Fox, Lutz Fritsch, Joe Fyfe, Roman Gysin, Tony Huynh, Imi Knoebel, Gereon Krebber, Daniel Lergon, Kai Richter, Winston Roeth, Natascha Schmitten, Richard Tuttle and Alicia Viebrock.

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