Christoph Dahlhausen and David Thomas: An Ongoing Dialogue New Works on Colour, Light and Time.
CHRISTOPH DAHLHAUSEN AND DAVID THOMAS: AN ONGOING DIALOGUE NEW WORKS ON COLOUR, LIGHT AND TIME
Jason Haufe: Unintentional Defamation
16.09.26 - 10.10.26
An Ongoing Dialogue: New Works on Colour, Light and Time
An Ongoing Dialogue: New Works on Colour, Light and Time brings together recent works by German artist Christoph Dahlhausen and Australian artist David Thomas, extending a dialogue between the artists that began more than two decades ago. Across their distinct practices, both artists investigate colour, light, time and the contingencies of perception.
Dahlhausen and Thomas first met in Cologne in 2003, when Thomas was exhibiting in Germany. Since then, they have participated in and curated more than twenty-five exhibitions together, including an exhibition at Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche, Osnabrück, in 2007. Their respective practices engage with the legacies of minimal, post-minimal and conceptual art.
Light is fundamental to Dahlhausen’s work. Employing glass, mirror, reflective materials and colour, his works respond to and incorporate their surroundings. Reflection and transparency complicate the boundaries of the object, making architecture and ambient light integral to its appearance.
Thomas considers colour as both spatial and temporal. His reduced geometric structures explore subtle shifts in tone, proportion and position, situating colour in relation to surface, architecture and the duration of looking.
Placed in proximity, the works establish a series of correspondences while retaining the autonomy of each artist’s practice. Colour, reflection and light move between works and across the surrounding space, creating relationships that remain contingent on the conditions in which they are encountered.
The exhibition extends a longstanding exchange between Dahlhausen and Thomas, foregrounding the affinities and distinctions that have sustained their dialogue over more than twenty years.
Christoph Dahlhausen is an artist, curator and teacher based in Bonn, Germany. He works across installation and light-based artistic forms. Light, colour and space are the guiding principles of his artistic work. Both natural and artificial light, and its interactions with reflective and translucent materials, are at the centre of his installations and objects. Christoph has exhibited and curated extensively in museums and in institutional and commercial spaces in Europe, the USA, Mexico, Brasilia, Australia, and New Zealand. As a curator, he has been organising international exhibitions for various institutions since the 1990s. From 2003 to 2019, he ran the exhibition project spaces “proximus” and “raum2810” in Bonn.
David Thomas lives and works in Melbourne/ Naarm, Australia. His work explores the contemplative function of painting, photopainting and installation, in particular how new iterations of the monochrome tradition can explore the perception of time and space, complexity and impermanence. He holds a PhD from RMIT University, where he is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Art. He occasionally curates. Selected collections in Australia: National Gallery of Victoria, Australian National Gallery. Heide Museum of Modern Art. RMIT University, Cripp’s Collection, Australia and UK., Gippsland Art Gallery, Ballarat Art Gallery Victoria, Justin Art House Museum. Internationally: Chartwell Collection NZ, Auckland Art Gallery. Canterbury University, Christchurch, NZ. Lim Lip Museum, Gong Ju, South Korea. Theodor F. Leifeld Stiftung, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany. Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; The Frederick Collection, Germany.