Excerpt from an essay by Jürgen Kisters. The full text is in the new catalog by Dan Hepperle to find.

THE SILENCE IS WHITE - THE PAINTER DAN HEPPERLE

... Hepperle Dan loves the silence, it stands in the center of his art. More precisely: it is the silence that is always there, and we are in the noisy bustle of our day most of the time completely forgotten. How many musicians in their compositions the silence audible, Hepperle makes it visible in his pictures. And while we have the eyes to rest in his pictures, even the silence is audible. Inevitably one asks: what is silence? A state, the answer, in which one to rest and comes to himself. On Hepperle certain pictures are no specific motives to see, nothing figurative and the structures are very withdrawn. In short: at a glance, these images are not to be recorded. Who expects the works of art, when you look at Hepperle fine white nuanced picture zones have the feeling to nothing to look. Nothing but a white, in which, the longer one that looks more and more tiny details are visible.

... Infinite shades of white, to be exact, each at a touch different, so it only through the subtle difference to another at all is visible. And then you suddenly amazed that what one has to know, not white, but the field of an infinite transition ... gray glimmer of tenderness. Gray thinks, is a beautiful gray color, and the silent mystery of inconspicuous is a time to become a charming picture. White and gray, gray and white, and all other colors suddenly appear to be too much. Too much at once. Anyway, you suddenly feel as though all the colors just as a hint to endure.

Many years ago the painter has the Zen-Buddhism as its element discovered. The Zen ideal of self-forgetfulness is its perception as well as the Zen experience, life is not in the attainment of goals, but in the awareness of his trial to take place. For art, that means that it does not matter, as many pictures with as many different motifs and themes to paint. Rather, it depends on the position in which an image is, and that this attitude than experience painted in the finished picture is included. She is for anyone who is prepared to accept the smallest of quaint little to establish an image.

... For Hepperle has long been established: it is in painting, not concepts, not to break loose break with tradition and not to the constant need for new. In fact, is about to add to the motion, resulting from the preoccupation with the color. This finding was Hepperle synonymous with the discovery of slowness in the work of painting. Meanwhile, he works three or four months or more to a picture, but always on several simultaneously.

... The repetition is a central experience in Hepperle artistic work. Again and again he painted the same picture seems to every time the subtle variations in the repetition to encounter. About the painting, he realized that each repetition inevitably represents a new version. It never rises two times in the same image. Every moment is painted differently, just as every living moment is different.

Hepperle Dan lives and works in the Eifel.

More Information: www.dan-hepperle.de

"The main theme in Susanne Stählis' work is colour. For many years, and with great intensity, she has dedicated herself to the value of different means of expression and the very subtle possibilities of experiences of colours. In the last years this has lead to a gradual reduction of elements such as lines and forms in her painting.

The only formal orientation of the smaller artworks especially is the rather strict vertical and horizontal layering of colour. At the same time, large format paintings are created which offer the possibility to 'stand in the colour'. Here, colour becomes almost a physically felt elementary experience...

...In her drawings, tender and uneven line elements determine the picture, yet they appear to be loosely and unintentionally created. The more recent drawings are more about clear and straight settings of lines. Both come unintentionally from the drawing hand.

Her paintings and drawings have transparency and ambiguity in common and therefore the fascination of seeing and experiencing in one picture."

Dr. Martin Gesing in the foreword of the catalogue "Schichtungen" (Layers) 2007

Further information: www.susannestaehli.de