This year, all our physical presentations are titled MONOLOGUE, DIALOGUE or TRIALOGUE – they are solo, 2-person or 3-person exhibitions. A subtitle explains the respective thematic focus according to which the artistic positions were selected. In the case of "TRIALOGUE - Aspects of Abstraction", we juxtapose sculptural and painterly works by three artists who work non-objectively with different materials – fabric, wood, cast resin, paint.

In her sculptural works made of wood, resin, natural materials, plaster and plastic, the South Korean artist Ji Eun Lee (born 1984 in Seoul, lives and works in Munich) deals with the experience and visualisation of space, spatial boundaries and interstices. A space between two things or living beings can be rationally, mathematically grasped by measuring. More significant, however, is how changing physical factors such as light and shadow or narrowness, width or depth determine the subjective atmosphere of interstices that at first glance are not the focus of attention. Ji Eun Lee's reflections on space and negative space are particularly tense in her new works, which are created by embedding willow branches or fragments of wicker basketwork in casting resin. By sanding the resulting rectangular picture blocks, structures and interstices are made visible for the first time in the cross-section. The viewer gains new perspectives on a hitherto hidden, inner composition, which now consists of the light cut surfaces of the willow branches on the surface of the object pictures and continues into the depth of the pictorial space.

Artist Statement Molly Thomson (born 1953 in Perth, Scotland, lives and works near Norwich, Scotland): "My conversation is with the object of the painting and with its hybrid identities. Beginning most often with the simple fact of the rectangular painting panel I place myself in the position of both agent and observer, using acts of cutting, reassembling and pouring to re-form - and respond to - each piece. I am interested not only in the layered facade that is presented, but also in the fact that the painting casts and contains shadows. There is always a delicate balance between control and the unpredictable behaviour of materials, and the process advances by slow increments, mis-steps and revisions. Occasionally work descends from the wall and demands space or even mobility. There is play and sometimes there is humour.
Current work continues to evolve through the setting of a series of problems and displacements in each structure. Interior spaces are often implicated, even if only glimpsed through the smallest of openings, and I am interested in the quiet question that such breaks in the facade might pose. Sometimes the paintings are layered, suggesting compressed strata of parallel surfaces. Some paintings may quietly allude to what cannot or shouldn’t be seen, while others flex their joints or extend their surfaces with a touch more expansiveness. Often it can seem to me that order is provisional - something to be tampered with."

Finely painted and specially dyed fabrics such as silk are sewn to the canvas by Minh Dung Vu (born 1995 in Vietnam, lives and works in Leipzig), thus expanding the classical concept of painting. His fascination with a wide variety of fabrics and textiles and their mutability are the starting point for his works. Depending on its thickness and structure, fabric behaves differently and can be stretched and worked in different ways. Vu combines colours and shapes with playful ease and yet precisely and harmoniously in his works. Although the fabric is used one-dimensionally in Vu's works, light and shadow play a major role: depending on where the work is placed in the room, different light and shadow formations become visible due to the materiality, determined by the permeability and fragility of the fabric. Vu unobtrusively experiments with materiality, he combines materials and explores the boundaries of perception; in doing so, the past, tradition and memory are combined with new impressions of the present to create timeless works of art.