The Reinhard Ernst Museum has the most extensive private collection of works by Helen Frankenthaler in the world. For the exhibition, Jenny Brosinski, Ina Gerken and Adrian Schiess - each in their own right - selected works by the artist from the Reinhard Ernst collection and staged a hanging of their own works. They were free to choose both the works and the exhibition space. The result: an extraordinary juxtaposition and encounter of abstract art!

Large-format works that lie on the floor? Typical of Adrian Schiess. In the 1980s, he developed a series of large-format lightweight panels lying on the floor, whose reflective color surfaces consist of an aluminum top layer. Initially, he painted them himself: Layer by layer with industrial paint. In 1990, he decided to take a radical step: he had the panels sprayed by professional painters and coated with an effect paint. In this way, he completely dispensed with his painterly signature. The result is immaculately smooth, glossy surfaces that react to light, space and movement.

Schiess first encountered Frankenthaler's work in the early 1980s on a trip to New York: "What fascinated me was this dissolution of the boundaries of the image, the liberation of color and the fluidity that runs more or less strongly through the work from beginning to end."

Jenny Brosinski and Helen Frankenthaler have much more in common than just the medium of painting: courage and a willingness to take risks are the driving force behind the work of both artists. Taking risks, being surprised, experimenting, wanting to push painting further. With these words, Frankenthaler described her working method, which Brosinski shares in that she recognizes supposed painterly accidents, consciously continues to work with these elements and develops unforeseen compositions from them. She became acquainted with Frankenthaler's work during her art studies.

Spontaneity and intuition play a key role in the creation of a painting by Ina Gerken. It is a process that is full of surprises for the artist herself.
In her works, expressive painterly gestures and smears meet the completely free flow of watery color.

All four positions come together in the light-flooded "Cathedral", the sculptural space in the Museum Reinhard Ernst. In their interplay, an exchange of two artistic opposites unfolds along the walls and on the floor. On the one hand, there is subjective expression - the handwriting with which artists consciously inscribe themselves into the work. On the other is the attempt to dissolve authorship and relinquish control to material, chance or the pictorial process.