German Stegmaier
drawings - September 15 until October 20, 2007
Stegmaier is a minimalist, without principle or pathos. A cautious ponderer, torn between the not-enough and the too-much-already. Yet his waverings are definite and determined, as if he were seeking openness in closure, and wholeness in that which is missing and incomplete.
In the drawings: a tentative, step-by-step exploration, putting in and taking away, adding and removing emphasis, as if a structure or geometry lay waiting to emerge beneath the surface of the paper, and as if this structure or geometry had less to do with form than with space and light.
This is chamber music in the manner of Anton Webern, relying on extreme reduction and differentiation – music so quiet as to be almost inaudible. But its fragility is also a strength; its very imperfections constitute its uniqueness; its temporariness is the basis of its durability; its silence is sound, its poverty wealth. Like Webern, Stegmaier has no need of extravagance and diversity; for him, the minimal is inexhaustible and even the quietest tones are still too loud.
Karl Bohrmann(1996)