Rita Kanne
Ralph Merschmann

ANDERNTAGS

It is exactly 30 years since Rita Kanne and Ralph Merschmann first exhibited together in the then newly founded Galerie Stefan Rasche in Münster. We are now taking this anniversary as an opportunity to once again present a double show with current works by the two
artists. Entitled "Anderntags", the exhibition combines sculptural works by Rita Kanne with abstract paintings by Ralph Merschmann: an already tried and tested combination that nevertheless opens up an exciting dialogue.

Rita Kanne builds hybrid, ambiguous sculptures and spatial installations from everyday materials. Whereas in the past it was mainly pieces of furniture from the bourgeois milieu that underwent a plastic transformation in her art, in her current production the artist is concerned with ritual or cultic structures and equipment - including a pulpit woven from coloured PVC ribbons, a towering canopy as it might serve for processions, or stubborn masks made from hundreds of strands of beads. By using nothing but profane materials for their construction, Rita Kanne's works unfold an ambivalent character that is situated between high culture and mass culture, between the secular and the spiritual spheres – and thus conjure up a multitude of different meanings. 

Ralph Merschmann's painting testifies to a well-founded specialism that is subject to continuous development: Starting with coloured dots, which are not painted in the conventional sense but applied to canvases or wooden panels using a special process, he organises his paintings successively - namely from the layering of this modular basic figure to rich compositions that unfold a maximum of visual complexity. This applies once again to his most recent works, for which acrylic and lacquer paints are used: Divided into fields and plots, they are dominated by individual, concentric point formations of various sizes. The ornamental all-over of earlier paintings is thus replaced by formal individuals in ambiguous relationship and delicate balance – for instance between attraction and segregation, between provisional order and free development in the pictorial space.