Bernd Zimmer - Reflexion

Galerie Jahn is opening the retrospective “Reflexion” exhibition with works by the renowned artist Bernd Zimmer on 20 June. The vernissage is being opened by Mr Daniel J. Schreiber, Director of the Buchheim Museum. Several exhibitions are being organised this year to mark Bernd Zimmer’s 70th birthday. The series of exhibition is being kicked off by Galerie Jahn in Landshut. The exhibition is showing works from the last eighteen years and includes the themes “Kristallwelt”, “Spiegelungen”, as well as cosmological pictures. Its title “Reflexion” also hints at the exhibition’s retrospective nature.

The element of water plays a central role in the “Spiegelungen” series of works where Bernd Zimmer is inspired by light phenomena time and time again. The exhibited “Reflexion” pictures lie between the water and forest. By letting the visible shapes in his pictures disappear into colour, the works can be seen as Zimmer’s criticism of monochrome painting, which always bored him. The “Reflexion” pictures also have a political background as they were painted during the banking crisis that shook the world and are to encourage the viewer to stop and think but are also to be seen as a kind of internal reflection at the same time. 

Zimmer processes the deep impression nature made on him during his travels to China, Vietnam and Cambodia in his “Kristallwelt” paintings. The aggressive, bright shades of green suggest a kind of toxic environment and show the elementary relationships of nature that only exist in this form in Zimmer’s painting. The title “Kristallwelt” embodies the visual analysis of the landscape theme and the connection between predefined structures and supposedly wild nature.

The “Wüsten” pictures were also inspired by his travels and experience of powerful natural landscapes and their flora and fauna in Libya’s Sahara region, south-western USA and Namibia.

Another of the picture series in the exhibition is “Cosmos”, the indescribable and eternally fascinating experience of the sky, stars and cosmic events, which are shown in the night sky and find a metaphorical resonance in Zimmer’s paintings, which fixates the fascination on the pictorial narrative. With the constant question at the back of your mind: Where do we come from and where are we going to end up? 

Bernd Zimmer (born in Planegg near Munich in 1948) is one of the most important representatives of the so-called “Neue Wilde” (i.e. New Fauves) or neo-expressive or “Heftige Malerei” in the early 1980s in Germany. He studied philosophy and religious studies in Berlin and is a co-founder of the legendary “Galerie am Moritzplatz”. The “Neue” or “Junge Wilde” artists create a new art movement here that is direct, wild and expressive at the same time and celebrate major success on the international art scene. Bernd Zimmer’s works are being exhibited in retrospectives of his works at museums in Regensburg, Kassel, Aschaffenburg and Wilhelmshaven to mark his birthday.