Within his artistic practice, spanning over four decades, Schulze has developed a visual language all his own between abstraction and figuration, in which domestic spaces and scenic landscapes take on attitudes and proportions that are humorous, unnerving, and always unique. Freely adopting painting styles derived variously from Surrealism, Naive Art, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, interiors filled with chairs, curtains, windows and other everyday architectural features interact playfully with the actual architecture of the space; while exterior scenes depicting cars, brick walls, clouds and other outdoor elements create exuberant processions along the gallery walls.

Entering the exhibition, viewers encounter two divided yet interconnected worlds. On walls of light green, canvases that depict outside realms reveal from the start Schulze’s clever interplay between depicted and physical space, as well as his balance of banal imagery with otherworldly.

Untitled (Demande au bouleau) (2022) opens up the view to a city park that contains a simple bench, lamppost, tree trunk and balloons, yet one has blown away toward a surreal burst of smoke that seems to overtake the painting.

Schulze’s lyrical, if also comic, positioning of his paintings guides visitors to the exhibition’s second zone: the inside. Installed on walls painted in a rich, chocolate brown, Untitled (Interieur with barrier) (2023) and Untitled (Interieur with hairstyle) (2023) brilliantly demonstrate the artist’s handling of space and the theatrical stage-like interiors for which he is so well known. In Untitled (Interieur with barrier)—whose brown walls and doorway mirror those of the gallery itself—a chair and a spiraling staircase surround a traffic sign and barriers, which seem to invade from the exterior world and generate an abrupt moment of abstraction.

Untitled (Interieur with hairstyle) also includes abstract paintings-within-a-painting, this time joined by tufts of hair, curtains and even potted flowers, whose pink bursts echo the canvas behind it.

Across the joining wall, a series of canvases and objects produce a “modular” painting, whose imagery of curtains, mirrors, trains and cars further emphasizes the thematics of staging, movement and immersion that run throughout the exhibition.

Their titles refer to sporting activities like gymnastics, yoga and wrestling, rendering the static moment of sculpture into a dynamic process while, at the same time, linking to the urban environment where such exercises are often practiced outdoors in public parks.

By emphasizing the window, Schulze gestures in part to the concept of painting as a “window onto the world” dating back to Renaissance art. His windows, however, refuse any obvious, idealized view; instead, they keep viewers engaged in a back-and-forth exploration of inside and out, reality and fantasy, past and present.

For more information on Andreas Schulze, please visit his 2020 online exhibition.