Klaus Kehrwald: Interiors | Kehrwalds Painting | Galerie Hengesbach | Questions for Klaus Kehrwald | Attempt about Kehrwald

In Kehrwald's images, the world is decayed, charred, burnt. Triptych-like, the burning candelabra appears before us like a sacred motif: the world glints in the glare of the candles as they burn down. Fragments of velvet tapestry are inserted like spoilers into the pictures here and there as if something precious must be preserved. Just as eyeballs are snatched upward by the burning cathedral spires - as if perception itself were a flame - the brain is made a secure treasure chamber: the twisting, turning brain, a central motif of Kehrwald's painting, is more than just the storehouse of a fading world - it's the symbol of an autonomous existence. This dual aspect of shining and fading becomes an act of pure painting. In their simultaneously dark and warm glowing tonality, Kehrwald's images reveal surface structures that come to the fore in certain of the viewer's positions and vanish in others. The object as perceived is imprinted in the "chamber" of the brain and obliterates the external image. Just as the internal is externalized, the external is internalized. It is this internal movement that distinguishes the paintings of Klaus Kehrwald.

Stephan von Wiese, 1990