Matthias Reinmuth: on

Infinite spaces behind the displays – colorful flickering images and information rush past, banking up digital worlds and captivate the eye on the small, smooth surfaces that glow softly, but otherwise have no life of their own. The reality, into which we all dive daily, has become virtual, as if there is something to be found behind the screen, which does not exist analogously.

“On” is the name of Matthias Reinmuth’s solo show, and indeed, some of his canvases seem to emit a glimmer, like a screen that is switched on, which pauses briefly and gently freezes a single frame.
However, the longer you look at the supposedly stopped moment, the more you get the impression that nothing is shown here or even transported by a display, but that the surface of the painting goes into dissolution: depths open in the colored areas, mist begins to waft and fleeing gestures break through the edges of the canvas. The view through the innumerable painted layers seaches and dives to find stability, but the appearance deceives twice: no digital lights and no pixel-based illusions are visible.

A “Glimpse”, as Matthias Reinmuth calls his latest series of paintings, is a brief, a passing glance. These pictures are essences of the volatility of virtual worlds. The streaming and scrolling, the shattering of substance and significance are transferred into the analogous sphere, into the physical world of oil, canvas, pigment and varnish. It no longer rushes behind the display, instead, the perception mobilizes to capture the physique of the images.
Other paintings seem more muted at first sight. But here, too, depths and hunches of space open up, challenging the intuition between sheer vastness and atmospheric vibrations: galaxies, underwater world or microcosm? Weightlessness, melancholy or leisure? Or everything at the same time? These worlds are also virtual – the imagination breaks through the surface and infinite possibilities open up.