 Horst Keining, Cité II, 2006, 25 x 75 cm, resin on canvas
Horst Keining (born in 1949) consults in ever new series with almost philosophical profoundness potential/virtuality and limits of the medium of picture. After his studies with Erwin Heerich at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1970 – 1976) he first started with “firm” paintings which were tied to the language of concrete arts. His interest in line and colour and sparing-rational structured images has persisted. With strictly geometrically designed series of images, Keining adds a completely independent version to the Colourfield and Colour Table Painting ranging from Barnett Newman to Gerhard Richter. Probably his best known 90-piece series “Lukas” (2000), is named after the paint of a manufacturer from Düsseldorf and shows in each case exactly the exact colour which is written in a small white field beneath with black letters and numbers.
 Horst Keining, Blechbildrosa75100, 2002, 75 x 100 cm, oil on canvas
These precise and elaborate works, including the work “Blechbildrosa75100” for example, have been followed since 2002 by pop-like compositions of cloth designs and floral patterns with an inscription of huge letters stretching across them. These inscriptions can be a company name, clearly silhouetted against the background, as well as highly enlarged, famous text fragments, for example of Rainer Maria Rilke. The writing is adjusted to the patterns of the background in a way that it seems to interweave with these patterns. Therefore, the words are often blurred, sometimes mirror-inverted, and hardly legible for the beholder.
 Horst Keining at work
Since 2003/2004 Horst Keining not only works with brush, oil paint and canvas, but also synthetic resin paint sprayed on canvas or walls. The intended blur of outlines, for instance while working with ornament patterns, leads to all kinds of “cryptically” appearing compositions which are of highest pictorial quality.
Horst Keining fathoms out the potential of painting among figure and basis, abstraction and object, ornament and writing – similarly reflecting and satirising the history of painting. In this way he meets the more and more complex visual present, the flood of pictures in the modern world.
At the last stage of Keining’s exhibition tour “View” in a “Revision” the latest works of the artist, just created in his studio in Düsseldorf – as well as a work sprayed on-site are displayed.
The catalogue “View – Horst Keining” for the different stages of the exhibition in Gießen, Wilhelmshaven and the Ludwig Museum Koblenz costs 19 Euro. It contains articles by Markus Lepper, Daniel Spanke and Beate Reifenscheid as well as an interview. (Edited by Daniel Spanke, Kettler, Bönen, 2006, 96 pages, numerous coloured images)
 Horst Keining, Rilke, 2004, 185 x 270 cm, resin on canvas
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