The art of Rainer Gross and Thomas Kühnapfel is characterized by an artistic as well as organically controlled and aleatoric creative process.
Rainer Gross achieved international fame through his “Contact Paintings” and “Twins” series of works. The paintings from these series are memorable for their exciting color symbioses and object-like quality, which the artist creates through a unique working process involving the layering of pure color pigments and a pressing process of two overlapping canvases. Gross deliberately leaves part of the artistic responsibility for the creation of his paintings to chance. In this way, he creates diptychs from two closely connected paintings, each of which is both an original and a mirror image of the other.
This is juxtaposed with Thomas Kühnapfel’s stainless steel sculptures, which radiate a lightness and organically flowing impression. A special feature manifests itself in the creation process, in which the artist shapes the stainless steel with volume using calculated hydraulic and physical forces through air and water pressure, thus creating a limited space from within. The form follows the force.
For both artists, the coincidence of artistically controlled events plays a major role in their work process. This coincidence of event and form, form as event, is the essence of art here.
