Landscapes: abstract, ironic, classical, critical, political, black and white, deserted, populated...

The perception of landscape is a complex issue that is influenced by individual, cultural and social factors.

How do we perceive landscape - as real, untouched nature? Or rather as a truly composed reality or perhaps even as a dream world? What can and should landscape do for us today? And what ideas do we have about its future?

The Landscape?! exhibition brings romantic wishes and feelings into dialogue with the demands of a modern, globalised world and its rules. Landscape has always undergone great change, characterised by social, ideological and technical developments.

As an artistic representation, landscape has also always been a reflection of the respective discussions about nature and its significance for mankind. With the rapid virtualisation of our world, our relationship to the environment has changed. Since it has become digitally navigable, calculable and manipulable in every conceivable way, designed and built landscapes act like a catalogue full of interpretations of nature, society, economy and culture.

The artists in the exhibition have developed various approaches to deal with this complex topic.

Albrecht/Wilke (Tim Albrecht born 1992 in Berlin / Hannes Wilke born 1991 in Stade, live and work in Berlin): Figurative, associative, subjective - this is how the style of the artist duo, who work together in harmony, can be characterised. The central visual subject of Albrecht/Wilke's works is the examination of the German middle class milieu, the associated clichés and insignia of German national culture. Currywurst, Toast Hawaii and other stylistic flourishes of German cuisine hover over abstract landscapes, chocolate pudding becomes a mountain. The German bourgeoisie thus appears in the dazzling guise of pop and leaves the viewer amused and yet shocked by the humorous accuracy of the artistic punch line.

José Gomes (born 1968 in Cariacica, Brazil, lives and works in Cologne): The content of Gomes' work is centred on the landscape, man's actions in nature and the paradox between his dependence on nature and his destructive actions. Based on these premises, nature can only exist as a shadowy element, the result of this reality. The aerial photographs of satellites and drones of forests, with their scientific and investigative character, photos collected on the Internet of vegetables, fruits, food, products of the earth, are transferred to paper and coated with layers of graphite in geometric shapes; graphic elements from both the culture or body painting of the aborigines and the political-economic speculation of the agro-industry.

Eric Keller (born 1985 in Grimma, lives and works in Dresden): Keller's pictures have a pulling power that you can't really explain at first. After all, nothing exciting is shown: deserted streets leading somewhere into a placeless topography, lonely benches, parks and rest areas, inconspicuous utility buildings, railway crossings, bus stops, a garage yard or a clubhouse, and again and again the faded walls of abandoned cultural centres from the GDR era. The painterly means are not aimed at spectacular effects either. On the contrary, the colouring is muted and pale, everything tone on tone, the faded violet, the earthy colours, lots of beige and yellow and brown. The visual world is also covered in a delicate blur. Everything seems somehow detached, unspectacular, without highlights. But it is precisely in this strange mood, which is difficult to put into words, in this aura somewhere between the banality of everyday life and unreal magic, that the great appeal of Eric Keller's paintings lies. Many of them look like frozen stills from a melancholy road movie, and it's a good idea to get involved in the quiet drive.

Daniel Müller Jansen (born 1978 in Düren, lives and works in Cologne): Architectural ensembles in South Africa decades after the end of apartheid: Müller Jansen contrasts the gated communities of the wealthy, predominantly white population with the social housing projects of the black population. The differences between these two milieus were neutralised by a uniform process of overexposure and post-processing. The photographic artist drew inspiration for his South Africa series from the luminosity and colourfulness of Mannerism. In his South Africa series, he uses the possibilities of targeted overexposure of analogue film material in order to achieve a comparable luminosity and colourfulness. This emphasises both the artificiality and model-like quality of the architecture shown, as well as the attitude and manners of its inhabitants. Müller Jansen's pictures also have something mannerist about them and show a society in which manners are not only associated with decency and custom, but also with demarcation.

Catherine Seher (born 1958 in Paris, lives and works in Paris): Catherine Seher's paintings are full of figures fleetingly inscribed in a landscape where borders and landmarks disappear. The anonymous silhouettes give us a vision of a fragmented world that is nevertheless full of meaning. We find ourselves in an unsettling face-to-face. The painter evokes a strong sense of anonymity and isolation in her work. By capturing the essence of a particular environment but extracting from it all the elements of meaning, Seher reduces both the art of the landscape and the figure to its very element, forcing the viewer of her work to consider the mechanics by which each component of the work is created. The result is a body of work that taps into the universality of art itself, one anonymous figure or view at a time.

Hideaki Yamanobe (born 1964 in Tokyo, lives and works in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Tokyo): After looking at many of Yamanobe's paintings for a while, you can recognise the suggestion of a landscape. It should be noted that Yamanobe does not paint landscapes, nor abstract landscape schemes, but rather allows the fluctuations in brightness resulting from the painting process to be read as proto-landscape elements. One could almost say that the artist succeeds in articulating vague memories or remnants of landscape experience in paint. For example, one sometimes believes to be able to recognise indistinct outlines of trees, mountains or even buildings in the fog or in thick snow; this would be the ‘cold’ reading. Or one can think of rising steam from hot springs; this would be the ‘hot’ variant of associations that are all the more likely to occur to viewers who are familiar with the traditional, outdoor Japanese steam baths (onsen).