Painting from five decades
October 28, 2011 – January 2012
at the MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg

Light and colour, form and space are the themes defining the paintings of Ulrich Erben. His works are founded on a basic geometrical structure which by virtue of the coloration is broken up, surrenders its boundaries and becomes immaterial. Erben’s colours are not subservient, but pro-active. They prevail over their form and interact, mutually enhancing or attenuating their impact, and lending the surface of the painting a spatial quality: Some of the colour fields appear to float and rise up from the pictorial ground, whilst others expand to create the optical impression of depth. Here, the painting sharpens our awareness for the process of seeing taking place in the eyes of the viewer.