COLOGNE.- Here, in the rooms of REHBEIN Galerie on Gro遝 Brinkgasse, the artistic positions of Heinz Breloh, Gerd Bonfert, Andreas Gefeller, and Peter Tollens converge into a rich resonance. The space that unfolds between the works of these four artists in this constellation is a resonant chamber of perception. Within it, materiality, light, physicality, and temporal processes enter into an unspoken dialogue, expanding beyond canvases, photographs, and other media to become fully tangible in all their consequence and depth within the gallery space.

This arrangement simultaneously reaches far beyond the gallery walls. At this year's Art Cologne fair booth as well as in the project Heinz Breloh – Circumspectio, curated by Katie Eva Gaj surrounding the K鰈n Messe/Deutz transit station, this invisible, shaping presence continues. It enters the fleeting rhythm of the city and building a spatial, temporal, and intellectual bridge between the immediate passage of urban transit and the concentrated reflection within the exhibition space.

The space ... that unfolds reveals itself through the shared attitude of all four artists. None of them understand space as a given, neutral container. Rather, it is a continuous process of becoming, taking shape only through the execution of artistic action, the visual interplay between the works themselves, the relationship between interior and exterior spaces, and the encounter with the viewer. A self-referential questioning of their own medium inhabits all four positions; they bring the process of image and form generation to light as a temporal and spatial tracing, jointly writing a shared context that declines to follow any rigid logic.

Heinz Breloh (1940 – 2001) understood the human body not as a mere object of contemplation, but as the fundamental creator of space. In the gallery, the focus rests on his signature sculptural works, in which he elevated his own physical dimensions into his primary tool. Through direct, performative gestures, Breloh imprinted his body into the moist, white plaster mass using his knees, elbows, or the full momentum of his torso. The resulting bronze and terracotta works are not static depictions, but physical relics of fleeting movements. They render this space-making action tangible as a monumental trace within the material, challenging viewers to continuously reorient their own body, location, and movement in relation to the sculpture and the room. While the sculptures embody material presence and force, the featured video documentation bridges the gap between sculptural body and process. The film captures Heinz Breloh working on Lebensgr鲞e Magdeburg (1995) at Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, making the creative process tangible. Engaging his entire torso, knees, and arms, the artist presses his own body into the moist plaster, leaving an energetic negative imprint that documents the immediate relationship between physics, space, and sculpture as it takes shape.

Andreas Gefeller (*1970) extends this critical inquiry into space onto the field of photography. Through intricate digital collages composed of hundreds of individual shots, he weaves together viewpoints that remain inaccessible to the human eye in everyday life. His works detach from a single, fixed perspective to re-evaluate space, ranging from map-like top-down views (Supervisions) to microscopic structural configurations (Insight Out). Gefeller's photographs question the medium's presumed claim to objective representation, exposing every image as a mental and technical construction. This inherent precision continues into the manual production of the final physical artwork. By managing the entire image generation process himself, from the multi-layered digital files to the meticulous fine art print, he generates a compelling interplay between digital construction and tactile material presence. The extreme contrasts, subtle nuances, and soft depth of the paper surface lend the photographic works in the gallery space a captivating, almost painterly quality.

Gerd Bonfert (*1953) enriches this constellation with a distinctly phenomenological and poetic dimension of photography. His works trace the subtle, fleeting layers of light, shadow, and materiality. Bonfert's photographs are not mere recordings of the external world, but visual condensations that make the act of seeing itself the central subject. He understands photography in the deepest sense of its etymology as a drawing with light, approaching each piece as a holistic artwork that he personally accompanies from the initial concept to the final print. Traveling through landscapes and natural spaces with a custom-built camera obscura, he searches for specific places of quietude and resonance. Positioning his camera there, he commits to a decelerated process of long exposure, allowing time itself to etch into the emulsion. Back in his Cologne studio, he carries this rigorous approach through to completion, developing the exposures by hand and creating traditional darkroom prints. His works capture the quiet transitions between presence and absence, generating phenomenological spaces of subtle, dreamlike intensity. Through his choice of wide perspectives, the landscapes in his photographs seem to expand far beyond the boundaries of the frame.

Peter Tollens (*1954) brings the pure, material presence of color and its sensory materiality into the group. In his works, paint builds up through a patient, multi-layered application into a physical substance that palpably absorbs and reflects light. Tollens interrogates the medium of painting down to its core autonomy. In this exhibition, his Eifel Studies are featured almost exclusively. These small-format works reveal that Tollens originates from concrete landscape impressions and internal emotional spaces. While the representational element remains present here as a quiet suggestion, the tangible landscape in his broader oeuvre yields increasingly to a pure, autonomous presence of color and emotion. Within the Eifel Studies, a fascinating depth opens up, making the hierarchy of brushstroke, layered application, and color as an independent medium and material fully tangible. His paintings call for deceleration, creating a realm of perception in which paint matter, surface, and time merge into an indivisible unity.

In combining these four positions, the exhibition Der Raum ... der entsteht (The space ... that unfolds) reaches its crescendo within the gallery space. From the physical traces of Breloh's body, the complexly layered visual structures of Gefeller – that will extend temporarily into the city and across the art fair, the light-infused perceptual spaces of Bonfert, and the dense paint matter of Tollens, the concept expands through a distinct, pulsating reality that emerges right here. The interaction of these positions is not additive, but transformative. Every glance, every step within the room activates new relationships, setting the surfaces into vibration and unfolding a dimension that continues within the viewer, gradually expanding space far beyond the individual artwork.

Elisa Mosch, 2026