Stephan Kaluza

The series "Reminiscence" of Stephan shows painting, oil on canvas, from the year 2014. On view are mostly black-and-white painted landscapes, provided with sharp contrasts and adequate depth effects. In part, the contours get lost in the white "nothingness" and so clarify the content-related reference: the nature seems to disappear, to get lost in this nothingness in a dissolving manner. The increasing distance to the observer becomes clear, and thus the distance between the nature and the human world. Kaluza explores in this way how far the human cosmos is still connected with a genuine cosmos (nature), or how much both have already been cut off from each other. Nature appears here as a kind of surface matrix, it no longer acts as a habitat, but as a pure visibility conceived in disappearance; in this way, these paintings also deal with the vision – by hiding a lost origin, which is no longer subject to the perception, but the reminiscence. For this reason, the choice of motifs is special; in part, in the collective memory, places with negative connotations are selected, such as Auschwitz - places that one would hardly associate with an idyllic nature. What counts here is the importance of a place, in the loss of the outlines and contours as well as the loss of this meaning; the idyll reveals itself as such, not least in this example, as a dying one.