EXCERPTS: THOMAS SAUTER

Bernheim Gallery, Zurich

10 NOVEMBER - 22 DECEMBER 2023

Bernheim is delighted to announce the second solo exhibition by Thomas Sauter at the gallery in Zurich entitled “Excerpts”. The show runs from November 10th until December 22nd 2023.  

The paintings on exhibition are unquestionably abstract, colour holds the unformed and lines the unstructured. What seeps beneath the canvas is a practice Thomas Sauter has pursued for the years before, and six years during his relationship with Bernheim Gallery. 

For this exhibition the artist presents his canvas in landscape form for the first time. Allowing the viewer to interpret the work through a format that is more natural to the human eye, widening the gates to the emotion that can be felt in a work of abstract expressionism.  

In the beginning, when the canvas is raw there is no intention, the only direction is a feeling for the touch of the brush on the canvas, from there an inner feeling gives way to exploration, guided by what happens when a red meets a yellow, or when a line passes another. The mergence of all this takes place with great energy and movement, most often in one drawn-out session, where the mixing of wet paint takes a final form and is then laid flat to rest.

Such feelings can only be transmitted from an object through a deeply focused and committed approach to work. We may find ourselves asking, can’t I too produce this? No. Not like this. Sauter has pursued this approach to painting with a dedicated consistence, through this self discipline he has been able to establish a confidence to express what is deeply within us all. 

From its origins of just over a century, abstract expressionism provided great freedoms which opened the world to conceptual forms of art work, the prevailing fashion in Zurich today. Sauter holds onto the emotional tradition of abstract painting in an environment that predominantly celebrates intellectual conceptualism, and in doing so addresses questions that cannot be answered through reason alone.

Images courtesy of Bernheim Gallery