THE SURFACE HOLDS NO SECRETS
- About visible traces of the creative process -
This exhibition focuses on the painting surface as a carrier of action, memory and meaning. The artists show how every brushstroke, scratch or layer of paint not only forms an image, but also leaves a trace of the action itself.
What is visible at first glance also forms a veil over what lies beneath: suggestion and concealment alternate. Instead of keeping secrets, the surface reveals the layers of thought and action. Here, painting opens up a field of traces: partly visible, partly tangible and at times inescapable.
At a time when image and meaning are constantly in flux, this exhibition focuses on the painted surface as a place of action, process and revelation. The Surface Holds No Secrets brings together a group of contemporary artists who approach painting as a tangible and living medium in which every layer of paint, every gesture, every overpainting leaves its mark.
The surface hides nothing: it reveals the physical action of painting, the doubt, the correction, the impulse. The paintings in this exhibition speak not so much in images as in gestures, in what is visible and what remains concealed beneath a veil of paint. The layers form a visual history, a memory of choices and changes.
Central themes are suggestion, transparency and the tension between revelation and concealment. What is source, what is coincidence, what is construction? The works show how painting today is not only about what is depicted, but above all how something comes into being and what remains visible, consciously or unconsciously.
Instead of a window to another reality, painting presents itself here as an autonomous surface; a field of actions and traces. The canvas becomes a place where meaning is not unambiguous, but arises in the tension between revelation and concealment, between what is visible and what is only suggested. The surface bears no secrets; it is the story.
Text: Wim Lambrecht – Pig Earth, 2025