As a painter, Lucas Salzmann feels bound to representationalism, producing references to art history and the media world in many of his works.

Since 1988 Salzmann has been overpainting photographic templates, such as, for instance, magazine articles, postcards and photographs, from various eras and a variety of motifs. By doing this, he liberates the images from their functional obligation, whereby they are no longer tied to their documentary character. With an intense application of paint and a vigorous style, he dissolves seemingly unequivocal content and translates it into an ambiguity that confers as much validity to the mystical as it does to the obvious.

Salzmann shows viewers how to follow their own perception, instead of simply trusting in what is shown. The concentrated atmosphere in his pictures opens up emotional spaces and leads us to a state of limbo between recognisability and the arcane, in which the transformative power of the painting unfurls its full effect. 

In the Viewer’s Eyes – the Unknown encompasses Lukas Salzmann’s work from 1995 to 2018. It includes an accompanying essay by Rudolf Velhagen, which locates the painter’s work in an art-historical context.