Salon Gröne x Rietz

Three years ago, both painters relocated their studios to the same old industrial hall in Babelsberg. Their works, which appear quite different at first glance, are now being exhibited together in a joint Salon in a private villa Potsdam. The venue itself has an eventful history: it was once the site of Europe’s first institute for applied psychology and was later surrounded by the inner-German border wall, with the narrowest part of the GDR right on its doorstep.

For Oliver Gröne, painting is a means of organising space. His works, composed of abstract planes and symbols, draw on our visual habits whilst simultaneously subverting them. Gröne’s works are consistently characterised by their role as references to and homages to the history of painting.

Christian Rietz, on the other hand, takes a concrete approach. In his works, the visible world is excluded. His use of textures and shades represents a distillation of painting to its fundamental essence. We are confronted with ourselves and our expectations of an image.

One might say that Gröne regards painting as an open window. For Rietz, it is a mirror.