Kuno Gonschior

About the work

Gonschior's shimmering dot paintings pose a challenge to our way of seeing. As they stand before his paintings, viewer are required to consciously gain their own impressions and experience their unique impact without any pre-conceptions and with open eyes. To what extent do Gonschior's colours stimulate just our visual faculties, and when and how do his paintings arouse our emotions? We must embrace our experience of colour, which only intensifies the more we interrogate our own understanding of colour and what we are really seeing! These images sharpen our senses. Which colours do we perceive? And what is reality: our knowledge or our impressions? And to what degree can we trust our visual perception? In this sense this painting is existential, for it reveals that there is no absolute truth.
Kuno Gonschior often works in series which particularly in the later creative periods also impacted upon his own moods: "I set up about 10 canvases and work through from spring to autumn. After that they are finished. That makes 10 paintings, each measuring approximately 2x2m. I work on them all simultaneously – eg. on the 'landscapes' – then I find myself in a joyful state of mind. A feeling of happiness ensues. The colours lift my spirits."
("Die Farbe hebt mich. Kuno Gonschior im Gespräch mit Walter Smerling", in: exh-cat. Kuno Gonschior. Nur für Dich und mich, MKM Museum Küppersmühle für moderne Kunst, 2008, 25)
From the early 1990s, the emotional resonance of colour in Gonschior's works became increasingly more pronounced. No longer do his works from this period merely stimulate the eye, but touch the soul of the viewer. Kuno Gonschior painted in a state of intoxication induced by colour, informed by his decades of experience and his profound understanding of the materiality of colour. His are the works of an artist who succeeded in melding intellect and emotion.
(Eva Müller-Remmert)