The works assembled at Galerie Bernd Kugler are not united by stylistic homogeneity, but rather by their shared approach to the image as a concentrated, reduced expression. Small- scale works compel the gaze to draw near: the eye moves closer, perception becomes intimate, the gesture more condensed.

Sarah Bogner often unfolds her works like a stage production, in which light, space, and figures form a theatrical choreography. Her motifs appear as fairy-tale-like beings—hybrid figures of human, animal, and fantasy—oscillating between serenity and drama. In her work, Sarah Bogner negotiates fragments of memory, mythology, and identity, which emerge like stage props in an ongoing play of thought.

Anna Kolodziejska engages with everyday objects as fields of possibility, employing estrangement and de-functionalization as central strategies in her artistic practice. Her works transform familiar objects and situations into new contexts of meaning, often with echoes of Duchamp’s readymades. The absurdity that arises opens a space for discourse and reveals how the everyday, through artistic re-interpretation, can yield new perspectives.

René Luckhardt’s glass still life in brown tones draw on classical traditions of representational painting, while the muted palette translates the object into a vanitas symbolism. The still life balances between baroque recollection and contemporary reduction, bringing transience and material appearance into dialogue.

Hans-Peter Thomas sets a deliberate counterpoint with his romantic landscape. In the tradition of the longing-filled landscape, the painting seems to reach back to the 19th century, and yet, within today’s context, it reveals itself as commentary: landscape as projection, as a timeless pictorial field for the relationship between nature and emotion.

Thus, in the gallery’s presentation, a field of tension emerges: small formats which, despite their differing approaches—representational, romantic, or conceptual—share a common sense of concentration. They demand slow, attentive viewing and, within their small scale, allow the great questions of painting and image-making to resonate.