Der Erde Raum

The Universe: An opus magnum, frameless, without background, suspended freely

Viewing this piece, one immediately experiences what Paul Klee termed the eye's pathways inside the image. The European observer, used to and practiced in the Latin script, will attempt to read the painting from top left to bottom right. This is eased by the composition, the tightly grouped horizontal lines in the upper right-hand corner are open towards their left, quickly guiding the gaze right and toward the canvas edge where the first line break awaits. Large, bold tassel stripes lead downwards.  In close vicinity and parallel to the edges, they allow for a stable anchor on the painting’s right-hand side.

This anchor is homogeneous in color and almost completely devoid of further formal structure, velvety in tone, embedded in a suggested vortex of lightness, accentuated by a faint red shine in its delicate arcs.

This warm passageway is being gripped, stabilized by the warmest and darkest region inside a horizontal element.  Allowing our gaze to follow this element, our eyes are pulled towards the left, traversing the change of hue from a deep warmth to crystalline, icy turquoise from which a prismatic figure upheaves itself like the turns of a spiral staircase that almost seems to lead outside of the painting's bounds before a gentle relaxation in both color and direction supersedes it by the soft echo of the stronger pillars on the right side.

The fine support structure breaks off after two thirds of its height, bent, almost broken by a diagonal wedge of shining, cold blue, almost a hint towards the virtual depths of its composition. This directional guide is perceived so

strongly because its blue lights up so brilliantly, almost metallic. A colorful frenzy of brilliant white, yellow and rose, pale and clear all at once, rules over the space, evoking comparisons to Edvard Griegs “Morning Mood”.  This

almost dictates referencing the Norwegian landscape: a fjord, as viewed from the fjäll, through the misty air of a cold morning…

The painting reveals a special secret only when openly suspended to allow light to penetrate the canvas revealing the title, or message, “Erde”, (earth).

Dr. K. Keßler