The illuminated windows conjure memories of Spielberg’s film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. The adjoining gallery features photomontages of a building designed by Lissitzky that was never built, ‘Der Wolkenbügel’, 1925. Lissitzky saw these buildings, as a proposal for a new rational architecture that would be a match for the trend at that time of building massive skyscrapers and a manifestation of the worldwide popularity of modernism. The painter and graphic artist Richard Paul Lohse used his work to reflect on the relationship between art and society. To him, the systematic and rational approach of constructive art was the only way to view the rapidly developing world and represent it. His work, therefore, must not be understood as a formalist exercise in colour, but rather as a critical, objective representation of social structures that can be used to investigate social reality. According to Lohse, constructive art was predestined to play a key role in dealing with a changing society and environment due to its philosophy and transparent methods. Once again, the means by which we gather information is key. How is information conveyed, and in what ways can we see it? If we think we know it already, is it still possible to see it, even if it is not said or shown as such?

Bik Van der Pol & Myriam van Lier