Gerwin Schmidt / artwork  1729

Schmidt’s paintings distance themselves from contents that could be detached from the aesthetic events on the picture surface. Nor do they execute a concept laid down in advance. The painterly primal scene is not a means of producing content, but the actual artistic goal. Whoever looks at the paintings is supposed to become a witness of the transmutations taking place before his eyes – no more, but also no less. Whoever has this experience senses a special form of aesthetic presence. What the paintings ‘mean’ coincides with what they are: Constellations of colors and brush marks, which in their contrasting spectrum give rise to a ‘concordia discors’, a unity in difference. The emergence of such a ‘Concordia discors’, which can not be planned in advance by any recipe, has always been a decisive criterion of success of painting and one of the essential joys that can prepare the contemplation of painting – and in this way perhaps only painting.
(from Pleasuring Painting, M. Lüthy)