POSITIONS – 39

With POSITIONS 39, Galerie HMH presents two artistic positions that fascinate in their contrasts as well as their quiet kinship: Rolf Ohst, known for his monumental iceberg paintings, and Carsten Westphal, who has been travelling the world's deserts for decades.

The title of the exhibition, ‘East and West(phal)’, plays tongue-in-cheek with cardinal directions and artists' names, while also pointing to the polarity of the works on display: here the cold, sharp-edged white of the icebergs, there the warm, dusty ochre of the dunes. However, only the works depicting ice deserts were selected for this exhibition. Both painters are connected by an intense dialogue with the landscape – a style of painting that is not only a representation of nature, but also a resonance chamber for it.

Rolf Ohst's iceberg series invite us to look into a fragile world where melting and monumentality, threat and sublimity collide. His works are painted monuments to a disappearing natural phenomenon.

Carsten Westphal's desert paintings, on the other hand, bear witness to the vastness and ancient silence of the earth. The pigments, some of which he collects himself on site, lend his works a physical proximity to the landscape they depict.

Together, both positions create a tension between extremes: East and West, ice and sand. The exhibition thus becomes an invitation to reflect on the elemental forces of nature and the role of humans within them.