Sarah Haffner developed, for her compositions marked by distinct forms and a striking palette, a hybrid technique of oil paint and egg tempera. In her work, colour carries its own weight: it is not applied to reflect nature, but used expressively, and with spatial presence. Colour carries emotion; for Sarah Haffner, blue and blue-green are mirrors of the soul, emblems of melancholy. Her abstracted urban landscapes – faceless apartment buildings and firewalls across seasons and times of day – or her commuter train scenes are shaped by the city she called home for decades: Berlin.
Franziskus Wendels has spent over thirty years examining how artificial light behaves in darkness. In many of his image series, the city is central: its lights during a plane’s nighttime landing, or the glow of signs above cinemas and petrol stations. These nearly black, monochrome paintings – where no brushstrokes remain – are illuminated by colour in endlessly shifting hues. Their glow is achieved through a unique technique Wendels has refined over time, blending oil and lacquer and dissolving pigments. A final glaze, tinted in subtly varying tones, gives the light its flickering effect.
G. L. Gabriel conveys the fleeting atmosphere of the city through stylistic and painterly devices, applied with a bold, expressive stroke. She applies this approach equally to a monumental four-metre canvas of the Glienicke Bridge and a smaller painting of New York, where cast-iron fire escapes and rooftop water tanks conjure the city’s distinctive local flair.
Eric Keller builds his urban cosmos from casual glimpses – riverside walkways, athletic fields, parking lots, and railway crossings. His motifs are composed of large areas of colour, built up tone on tone from thin layers of oil glaze in various shades of grey, blue, violet, or ochre. The slight blurring he applies creates evocative spaces of memory. Working on the painting, he returns in his imagination to scenes he observed, but their exact location remains his secret.
In this exhibition, the city appears not as an architectural construct, but as an atmospheric space – a surface onto which melancholy, longing, and memory are projected through the subjective gaze of the five artists.
G. L. Gabriel (b. 1958) studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts (Hochschule der Künste Berlin) with K. H. Hödicke, completing her studies in 1981 as his master student. In 1979, she became the youngest founding member of the Galerie am Moritzplatz – a self-organized gallery of young artists who would later gain international recognition as the “Neue Wilde.” Gabriel has received multiple fellowships, and works of hers are held by the Berlinische Galerie, the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, and the Federal Republic of Germany’s collection of contemporary art, among others.
Sarah Haffner (1940–2018) grew up in England, where her parents had fled in 1938 because of her mother’s Jewish heritage. In 1954, she and her family returned to Berlin, where she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für bildende Künste). Her works are held by the Berlinische Galerie, the German Historical Museum Berlin, the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, and the German Bundestag’s art collection.
Eric Keller (b. 1985) studied painting in Nuremberg, Dresden, and Leipzig, completing his degree in 2018 as a master student of Professor Annette Schröter at the Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst) Leipzig. His works are part of collections including the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Municipal Gallery Dresden, and the Federal Republic of Germany’s collection of contemporary art.
Jan Schüler (b. 1963) studied painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) with Rissa and Fritz Schwegler, completing his studies in 1992 as Schwegler’s master student. In 1996 he received the Sponsorship Prize for Fine Art from the city of Düsseldorf. His works can be found in numerous private and public collections.
Franziskus Wendels (b. 1960) studied fine art and Catholic theology in Mainz and Montpellier after completing high school and training as a baker. He later studied philosophy and art history at the Free University of Berlin. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, and his works are held in major museum and corporate collections.
