Abstraction

Jean-Michel Basquiat combined symbols, words, letters and drawings in his picture. The painting is untitled, but because of the unique mixture of recognizable signs and traces you can read much from it as a viewer. With oil paint and oil pastels, the artist painted restlessly diverse references ranging from European cultural history to African-American counterculture.

The work “Fresh Aufhebung” consists of 170 canvases, which always have the same format of 50 by 40 centimeters. The paintings were created over the course of a year, with the artist Jutta Koether never painting more than one picture from the series per day. In the museum, the canvases, painted with black acrylic paint, are hung close together on the walls of a room. On display are pale streaks, compositions of dots and circular shapes, or somber swirls.

In layers, Cy Twombly has applied oil paint, wax crayon, and handwritten text to this three-piece wooden support. Four dark purple shapes, reminiscent of floating boats, come to the fore. But there is no horizon or clearly defined landscape. Rather, the image consists of overlapping strokes, drops, and lines.

Amy Sillman’s painting “Fatso” shows in a cartoon-like style, in bright green, the massive, shapeless body of a grim looking figure. We can't tell if the figure is male or female.

Four boxes, nails, cardboard written in felt-tip pen, white plaster dried mid-flow and a mystical-sounding title. The lower part of the sculpture is made of wood, while three round steps resting on it, somewhat reminiscent of a cake, are made of cardboard. The object is about a meter high and cast with a mixture of plaster, which in turn resembles a kind of glaze.

Artist Kerstin Brätsch sticks American coins in the shape of a large X onto the colored clouds, which comprise pigment, acrylic and oil on paper. They represent a real value. The fact that the paper is actually unsuitable to support the heavy coins and that coins keep falling off is of no concern to Brätsch, however. She likes the fact that her paintings thus become “wishing wells”—as if you could seal your happiness with a few cents.

Seth Price goes toe-to-toe with privacy: the artist uses linen and printed cotton lining, which he sews together to make envelopes. The 1.22 x 2.43 m “soft sculpture” is torn open. In fact, it is so soft that it can be folded like a garment and displayed again and again in a new form.