Thomas Schulte

The exhibition Around and very close by Albrecht Schnider combines works in acrylic lacquer with a careful selection of drawings, offering an insight into Schnider’s complex, quasi-scientific approach to painting. Schnider’s paintings appear static and have been meticulously planned, organised and executed. The abstract, organically and geometrically shaped fields of colour, which are superimposed onto monochrome backgrounds, remain within their clear-cut boundaries. Alternating either between two colours or between black and white the obtuse shapes oscillate between figure and ground, positive and negative image.

All of the exhibited paintings have been preceded by drawings. For Schnider, who sees himself first and foremost as a draughtsman, the repetitive and intuitive act of drawing has become a necessity and is exercised by the artist daily and with great diligence. In the artist’s quest for ever greater harmony and homogeny in his image production, the act of drawing is a way to intuitively and instinctively find and invent new shapes, which the artist collects in his pattern books to be analysed, measured and transferred into geometric schemes.