Wolfgang Ellenrieder – try & error

Wolfgang Ellenrieder stages a refined play with perception that lends his paintings a subtle tension. Pictorial space and surface merge; motifs appear tangible yet dissolve into soft blur. Tilting effects shift proximity and distance. Stains and pools of color created through material experimentation form an open structure in which shapes emerge, disappear, and continually reorganize themselves in a natural process of trial, irritation, and apparent failure. This creates a multilayered interplay between art and experimental research, revealing clear references to scientific ways of thinking.

Wolfgang Ellenrieder mixes his own colors. Rather than using standardized paints straight from the tube, he carefully selects the pigments and binders he employs. His aim is to work with pure substances, which can be applied very thinly to a prepared surface and thereby develop a distinctive luminosity. However, complete control is not possible—something the artist is fully aware of. Pigments and binders may separate again. Experimentation, error, and apparent failure: in these visual tipping points, the core of the exhibition “try & error” becomes visible—an open process between construction and dissolution, between control and chance, a continuous testing of possibilities.

With Wolfgang Ellenrieder, the KWS Art Lounge brings its previously featured emerging art into dialogue for the first time with an internationally experienced artistic position developed over many years. The exhibition marks a special moment in the program of the KWS Art Lounge. It brings together works from three decades of artistic practice and makes Ellenrieder’s process-oriented approach visible—a sophisticated play with perception. Image space and pictorial surface merge; motifs seem tangible while simultaneously dissolving into soft blurriness. Visual tipping effects shift perceptions of proximity and distance. Scales move between micro- and macrocosm.

Large-scale canvases, into which viewers can almost immerse themselves, are shown alongside smaller works and are complemented by air-cushion objects.

Ellenrieder uses the means of painting to allow pictorial space and surface to flow into one another. At first glance, the motifs—often drawn from flora and fauna, molecular structures, or imagery reminiscent of looking through a microscope—appear three-dimensional and tangible. Through color gradients, glazes, and deliberate techniques such as accelerated drying, the boundaries between figure and ground begin to blur, capturing transitional states. The artist typically works on large canvases laid out on the floor; he may climb a ladder to view the emerging work from above and uses brushes, rollers, brooms, and even airbrush tools.

The 14 works presented by Ellenrieder can be understood as a “laboratory of painting and thought,” where experiments sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, explained Reinhard Spieler, Director of the Sprengel Museum Hannover, in his introduction. The works often feature vegetal forms—preliminary stages of plants, stems, or molecular structures viewed as if under a microscope—resisting clear classification. Scale shifts continuously, and the virtual worlds depicted, which do not exist in reality, originate in the artist’s imagination.

"Great ideas do not emerge when someone simply follows a linear method step by step, but when they try something completely different. This exhibition is a wonderful source of inspiration in that regard."

Stephan Krings, Head of Global Marketing & Communication at KWS