Robert Ryman und Urs Raussmüller: Advancing the Experience

Installation in the Hallen für Neue Kunst Schaffhausen with Concord, 1976, and Delta, 1966, by Robert Ryman

It is truly amazing that a painting can actively create space—as is the case in Robert Ryman’s works. I would like to remind you of an old habit in painting: one used the frame to distinguish the image from the surrounding space in order to create an illusion of space within the frame. It is an extraordinary advancement in the history of painting that one can now effectively create space with the painting as such, and that this space is conveyed physically.

With this new understanding for a multi-dimensional effect of painting, the possibilities for painting as a phenomenon suddenly expand exponentially. By being able to create space, the step that painting can now take opens up completely new channels to effects and experiences. I mean “create space” in the sense of an active moment, not as a result of a form of representation. Directly emanating from within—the way it can be experienced in Robert Ryman’s paintings at the Hallen für Neue Kunst.

(Excerpt from an interview with Urs Raussmüller in “Robert Ryman and Urs Raussmüller: Advancing the Experience Hallen für Neue Kunst, Schaffhausen, 2010)