In discovering the solo exhibition of Jannis Schroeder (°1989) the visitor can perceive the limits of a discursive approach and can feel the silence emanating from the paintings. Jannis Schroeder’s ten paintings have all been made over the years 2017 and 2018. Often in a large format, they consist of one colour that is placed against white to the left and white to the right.

Obviously, this some what arid description does not convey the wideness and complexity of the work, but it is helpful in understanding that the idea of the act of painting and its necessary repetition are of fundamental importance to the artist’s work. His paintings follow a systematic logic and remind that ultimately a painting is a material placed on a base by means of a utensil. Jannis Schroeder starts out from this axiom and develops it rigorously.

This apparent simplicity in the process requires a back and forth between attentive analysis of the details and the distance indispensable for the overall view. Being close to the works means getting lost in colour. Being far gives the single work a solidity and a personal single character. It is also useful to point out the importance of the light and architecture for such a work to have its full effect.

Each painting consists of a superimposition of colours that are not predefined. The artist may start with yellow and finish with brown, his palette is diversified and ranges from vivid to muted colours. One has the indescribable feeling that the colour is contained underneath, one feels an underlying movement. The vibration of the canvases comes from this sedimentation, these depositions of accumulated pigments, and the tactility of the brushstrokes.

The white that is giving the colour a place in the painting is painted in a controlled but visible stroke and functions in the most
correspondent and neutral way.This neutrality as well as the soberness of the technique and the titles, only referencing the paintings’ own size, technique, and year (e.g. 270 cm x 210 cm, oil on canvas, 2017), contrasts with the resulting richness of information received by the viewer and enables a vast discourse.