Barbara Seiler

The title of this drawing show, curated by Marcel van Eeden, reveals it’s mood: rather dark. RAL (Reichs-Ausschuss für Lieferbedingungen) 7021 is a color, described as ‚black grey‘ .
‚Eine magnifique Reportage!‘, the second part of the title, comes from a poem by the German expressionist and experimental poet Gottfried Benn.

The artists that take part were chosen mostly because of the somewhat mysterious and sinister character of their work. The drawings they make are often situated at night, in cities or in undefined spaces, and show strong contrasts and shadows. No wonder most work in the show is done in black and white.

Marc Bauer’s (b. 1975) black and white drawings are based on found photos and other material. Often he relates his series of drawings to literary, philosophical or cinematographic sources. But it is not all about the past: contemporary political issues play also an important role in his work. Alongside a large format, apocalyptic still life embodying a zombie he shows portraits of female serial killers.

A lot of black humor is found in the work of Beni Bischof (b. 1976). His drawings are as dark as absurd, and show the artist is not taking himself or the viewer too seriously. But exactly this attitude allows him to touch something essential.

One can call the drawings of Damien Deroubaix (b. 1972) grim and gloomy. Skulls and skeletons are the main characters in his work, were also graphical elements like texts are figuring. There is a very clear political and critical element in his images. For this show he has done a series about soldiers, referring to the title RAL 7021, the color that was used to camouflage military tanks in World War II.

What we really see on Ronny Lischinski’s (b. 1976) drawings remains unclear. A mysterious cloud could be a human being, dark spots could be eyes that look at us. It’s all like a dream.

Which is completely different at the work of Rik Smits (b. 1982). Where we are is clear, and what we see is clear: a city, with high risers from another era. Rik Smits is rebuilding cities that never existed, but look like they were always there, inspired by films like Metropolis.

Marko Tadic (b. 1979) is using also old images, but with subtle interventions he makes them much more mysterious. The works from the series ‘We used to call it: the Moon!” are done on old postcards, book-pages or pages from notebooks and appear like a documentary on a second moon.

Marcel van Eeden