In his sixth solo exhibition Volker Saul presents new paper works, installations and sculptures in the Galerie Gabriele Rivet Cologne. They provide an insight into the artist's new work phase.

If the earlier objects were mainly determined by strong monochromies and thus of immediate symbolic lucidity and presence, the surfaces of the new objects show a painterly finesse and aesthetic opulence. The lucidity and immediateness of the earlier monochrome colors gives way to a new interest in the movement and dynamics of colored ribbons, meandering bows and streaks, or the all-over of dripped textures. Color no longer emphasizes the symbolic character of form alone, but begins an indipendent dialogue between the painterly surface and the concrete form within an ambivalent game.

New is the way Volker Saul applies painterly methods creating colored textures at the surface - build from several layers of color - resulting in a nuanced and sometimes spatial effect. The effect of depth thus resulting, and the impulsive intensity of applying color, lends the objects a vital, emotional component, which contrasts with the precise forming of the symbolic objects.

Despite their physical presence Volker Saul's works are characterized by a vague uncertainty. Therefore, the new objects can rather be described as processes than their concrete meaning be specified. The material evaluation of the objects is opposed by a virtualisation of the concrete.

The nature of their power develops between two contrasting poles, a melange full of tension and ambivalence, which does not specify the one or the other as absolute meaning. Volker Saul's works remain productively open in their constructive contradiction, and can be read in various directions. For the viewer they become ambiguous events and challenge our perception again and again.
Gerd Borkelmann