Micro & Macro

This exhibition brings together two distinct painterly positions that investigate the structures of contemporary vision, navigating the intersection of digital image-generation and tactile materiality. While sharing a common starting point in the deconstruction of the pictorial surface, both positions arrive at antithetical yet complementary visual solutions.

The artist duo Römer + Römer translates contemporary digital snapshots back into the physical realm of oil painting. Employing a meticulous, hand-painted pointillism, they fragment ephemeral beach and crowd scenes into thousands of distinct color dots. From a distance, these micro-structures coalesce into figurative representations, mimicking the RGB sub-pixels of a digital display. This process slow-tracks the hyper-acceleration of our daily influx of smartphone imagery, transforming fleeting screen data into permanent, layered paint.

In structural contrast, Judith Sturm’s monochromatic color field paintings operate as macro-pixels. Her large, geometric blocks of intense color function like radically magnified fragments of a digital grid. Rather than presenting a clean digital surface, Sturm introduces a visceral counterweight through her signature use of salt in the underpainting. This organic substance creates a crystalline, highly textured topography that mimics the visual phenomenon of electronic noise or sensor grain.

Dialoguing across the gallery space, the fine, pointillistic networks of Römer + Römer and the monumental color blocks of Judith Sturm form a compelling tension. Together, they bridge the gap between the clean mathematics of the pixel and the unpredictable, elemental forces of painterly texture.