The title MORE & BETTER LIES is a play on the growing overload of information sources currently transforming the purportedly clear line between true and false into a vast gray area. Whereas in his previous exhibition in 2023, Pompa set the “scenes” of his pictures in a theatrical staging, the artist now opens his view to a broad expanse, to landscapes with a wide swath of sky. But these landscapes, too, are more like flatlands, plains on which human activities have left their mark.

The entire exhibition space again becomes an installation: a large-format painting stands, extending into the room. It corresponds with the works on the walls and the three pieces of sculpture, and allows a view of both its sides. The rear side, its image facing the viewer, can be perceived as a wall and also as a gateway. This prompts a state of overwhelming curiosity in which we feel compelled to look right through the picture before we’ve even circled ‘round to see the other side.

Engaging with the works of Lorenzo Pompa sharpens the senses. His utterly singular artistic standpoint demands empathy and presents codes that cannot really be cracked without knowledge of history. Pompa processes history in his works. He couples events of the past with those of the contemporary era. But his artistic language is of today, of the present. His aesthetics are often reminiscent of computer games, but are also timeless in an indeterminate way. One can’t help thinking of Giotto or of Philip Guston’s figurative paintings of the 60s and later years. One is reminded of both painters at once. The 600 years that separate them make no matter, because, as in Greek mythology, here, too, the great themes of humanity serve as a springboard for attempting to get to grips with human psychology.

In this sense Lorenzo Pompa’s works are also political, all the more so because they are not narrative or illustrative. They sound out the possibilities of art and provide evidence that they are, in fact, inexhaustible.

We are delighted to announce the first solo exhibition in our gallery space of Cologne painter Heiner Binding. Since the 1980s the artist has pursued a path that has produced a dense and consistent body of work. We are showing the most recent works from this oeuvre.

First solo exhibition of the well-known Finnish artist Elina Brotherus at the Van der Grinten Gallery with a selection of photographic works from her conceptual work cycle “Walking Beuys”.

To celebrate the start of 2025, Van der Grinten Galerie is delighted to open the first solo exhibition with new gallery artist Leigh Wells in its space!

The works on paper signed by Sigmar Polke and dated from 1999, 2002 and 2003 are exhibited for the first time as a group. They are a wonderful example of the typical combination of various painting media, including spray paint, silkscreen, ink, watercolors and interference colors used by Polke.

For Rikako Kawauchi ‘s second exhibition at our gallery, we are showing her oil painting for the first time, in tandem with a selection of the latest drawings on paper. In contrast to the clear, light and airy drawings, in which the forms float and breath in the often empty space of the pristine paper, Kawauchi’s oil paintings display a strong physical presence: in the thick, fresh layers of colorful material that form the weighty, abstract foundation, the palette knife is used to carve out motives that nevertheless transport the same somatic energy as the thin, minimalistic lines drawn on paper.

The idea for the current exhibition came when taking a closer look at the work of Roy Mordechay and Frans Roermond. One thing the two artists have in common in that they are both deeply influenced by artworks well beyond their immediate purview.

A selection of about 40 original vintae prints by Karl Hugo Schmölz (1917-1986) shows once again the faboulous quality of this master of architecture photography.

The current exhibition includes new works from all of Neufanger’s oeuvre and also presents his extensive oeuvre of posters, posters, printed matter and books.

For 30 years, Elger Esser has travelled the regions of France searching for archetypical landscapes. In his most recent works the experience of landscape concentrates on the transition from the coastline to the sea and on up into the sky above, with its spectacle of changing cloud formations.

In his current exhibition „A Twitter at the Palisades“, the Düsseldorf based artist Lorenzo Pompa brings together his recent works, all created for this stage. The title, as is often with Pompa, has a double meaning which gives rise in our mind to an image at the margin of the unknown, that vast space which we can never dominate.