The exhibition Colours and Lines in Motion spans an arc from the mid-twentieth century to the recent past. A concentration on colours, shapes and lines along with the radical rejection of any manner of representationalism describe the narrative thread that is shared by Verena Loewensberg, Imran Mir and Anton Stankowski. Nonetheless all three artists’ works testify to a respectively individual vocabulary of abstraction that fuse local cultural influences and biographical circumstances. With one focus of its collection directed at concrete art in the milieu surrounding Anton Stankowski – recently expanded by the new acquisition of a spectacular work by Verena Loewensberg – the Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen is the first German institution to show works by the Pakistani artist Imran Mir. As with Stankowski, Mir’s formal approach is apparent both in his painting and his graphic design. Seriality and geometry play as much of a role in Mir’s work as does his break with all forms of rigid order. This gives rise to freer pictorial compositions with lyrical, musical and cosmic references that also suggest comparisons to Verena Loewensberg and produce alternative forms of modernism.
