Donata Benker opens a dialogue with visual worlds in which spatial structures collapse, giving rise to new constellations within the tension between order and instability. Her painting explores states between belonging and estrangement, between presence and dissolution. Overlays, fractures, and perspectival shifts condense into complex compositions that subvert traditional ways of seeing and open up an autonomous, multilayered pictorial reality.
In this crossing of boundaries, Benker makes painting tangible as a limitless medium. This becomes apparent in the dissolution of clear distinctions and the constant movement between spatiality and dissolution. Figures also enter the pictorial spaces, yet they behave much like the fragile structures that surround them: closed, introspective, and at the same time reaching outward. In doing so, they expand the architectural constructions with an existential dimension, anchoring the instability of space in human experience itself.
Thus, Benker creates a form of painting that resists fixed definition and instead points to the openness of perception—a pictorial reality that emerges anew in the very moment of viewing.

Philipp-Emanuel Eyrich develops sculptural objects in which organic processes of form interweave with constructive rigor. His vases, crafted primarily from concrete, unfold a striking presence that extends far beyond their vessel-like nature: in their clear, angular appearance they evoke the brutalism of architectural history, while at the same time resisting strict symmetry or rational geometry. Concrete envelops the archaic form of a vase like a prismatic structure, producing edges, fractures, and shifts that evoke both tectonic layering and organic proliferation.
The presentation of the works intensifies this ambivalence: the vases are displayed on wooden transport crates marked with the inscriptions “Fragile” and “Handle with Care.” In doing so, they oscillate between artistic object and functional everyday item, between monument and utilitarian form. It is precisely in this tension that their aesthetic contradiction unfolds: the hard, heavy materiality of concrete stands in radical contrast to the object’s determination as a vase—a vessel for the ephemeral and ever-changing aspects of nature. In this way, Eyrich’s works open up a multilayered field of tension between permanence and transience, protection and vulnerability.

In her cycle PortLand, Rubica von Streng unites the art-historical genres of portrait and landscape into organic pictorial spaces in which subject and environment exist in constant interplay. With her self-developed “Arpeggio” painting technique, she applies delicate, transparent layers of color that interweave interior and exterior spaces, generating a continuous dialogue of form, color, and perception. Flora and fauna merge within the images, reflecting the complex relationships between humanity and nature.
Philosophical, scientific, and societal questions flow subtly into the painting process and shape a visual language that also engages with physical states of matter and the concept of entropy. In the series Seasons of PortLand, Rubica von Streng explores processes such as transience, vitality, and cyclical renewal, translating them into condensed pictorial spaces.

Silke Mathé dedicates her painting to what is mysterious beneath the surface. She unfolds a pictorial world suspended between familiarity and enigma, thus opening spaces for individual interpretation and in-between realms. The visible appears as a surface behind which a layered depth is suggested, evoking an interplay of appearance and concealment.
At the center lies the portrayal of places, where mood, atmosphere, and emotional resonance flow into the composition. Mathé’s works move beyond visible reality to capture the essence of place in a way that is more immediate and incisive than the mere depiction of outward details. In this way, landscapes transform into poetic spaces of experience, appearing both precise and mysterious. It is a form of painting that makes the invisible palpable and reveals an independent reality beneath the surface.

Simone Bresele directs her gaze toward material and form. Her ceramic works, created between the Allgäu and Rome, draw on impressions of travel, cultures, and urban structures, distilling them into autonomous sculptural statements. In the loops conceived as wall objects, a poetic lightness unfolds. The loops allude to infinity and cyclical recurrence, while simultaneously eluding any narrative content. Form itself becomes the bearer of meaning, appearing free of narrative structure — immediate, playful, and carried by a clear sensuality.
Bresele’s loops demonstrate how the language of ceramic form, rooted in the tradition of craftsmanship, can unfold anew in a contemporary context, revealing a poetic dimension.

Wulf Winckelmann creates atmospheric landscapes that, within horizontal pictorial spaces, unfold into striking spatial experiences. Abandoned places—where nature appears dominant and imposing, and the human figure is absent—lend his paintings a powerful presence. His relief-like, impasto technique gives classical subjects a contemporary resonance and draws the viewer into the expanses of nature and mood.
The canvases also possess a three-dimensional quality: they project into space and extend the pictorial effect beyond the surface. In this way, a subtle tension emerges between traditional landscape painting and contemporary formal experimentation, reinterpreting motifs and perspective. Winckelmann’s works open a sensorial experience of landscape that is at once poetic, monumental, and physically tangible.