In this challenging new exhibition, suggestively entitled Coquelicot [Wild Poppy], Adrian Schiess marks out
extreme elements of his oeuvre and at the same time displays their connection – which can be better
understood by thinking of a Möbius strip, whose two reverse sides imperceptibly but unpreventably merge into
one another. To bring seemingly contrary painterly conceptions into play is a matter of extreme radicality and
precision, which only a complete lack of understanding for the artistic thinking behind it could confuse with
indecision, randomness or variability.
The first panels of 1986/87, laid flat on the floor and covered in coloured, reflecting enamel paint, come at the
beginning of Adrian Schiess’s painterly oeuvre; the two panels in this new exhibition are from the years 2018
and 2019. For the first time now, chrome pigment is used for an enamel paint, whose dark grey-brown shade
in combination with the micro-reflections of the metallic particles and reflections on the shining surface
produces a coloration for which there is no known name. The term Schiess uses for this is Abglanz [radiance].
Abglanz points both to the explicit namelessness of this colour phenomenon and to its mingling with images
that reflect the surroundings.