Georg Herold f.

Capitain Petzel is pleased to announce the solo exhibition Georg Herold f., on view from February 27, 2026.

In 1985, Georg Herold presented his Kunstraub [Art Theftology] series in the exhibition Unschärferelation

[Uncertainty Principle] at the Realismusstudio of the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (nGbK) in Berlin. At

the core of the group are three roof-batten frames of roughly equal size, more or less crudely nailed together

and covered with black fabric panels of varying dimensions. In Kunstraub I (1985), the fabric is draped in elegant

folds, leaving ample openings that allow the viewer to see through large parts of the frame – a nonchalant

undoing of Suprematist transcendence. Kunstraub II (1985) appears as a literal enactment of Sigmar Polke’s

famous directive, Higher Beings Command: Paint the Upper Right Corner Black! – just as a dutiful student might

carry it out (Herold studied under Polke from 1977 to 1981 at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg). In

Kunstraub III (1985), only the upper right corner of the frame is wrapped in black fabric like a gauze bandage –

if you like, an image of healing long before that term gained currency in the art world.

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This sequence of ever “lesser” paintings playfully engages with the intellectual history of modern art. The works oscillate between a utopian notion of painting, artistic inspiration, and deskilling, without committing to any one position. Taken

literally, however, the series’ title points to a question that is at once banal and fundamental: who has stolen from whom? And where, exactly, was the art before it disappeared? In the picture? In front of it? Behind it?

What unites Georg Herold’s early roof-batten works is a logic of exposure. Everything is laid open; there is

no secret. Room Enough (1986), which also exists in several variations, already reveals itself through its bare

materials alone. In the large objects of the 2000s, sewn into heavy canvas, this logic seems to have been

turned on its head. Tightly stretched and coated in colored lacquer, the fabric clings to complex roof-batten

constructions that oscillate between biomorphic structure (Untitled, 2007) and figurative representation in

Der Zeiger [The Accuser, 2007]. The interior that determines the form is entirely concealed. These works are

far more elaborate in their production; the demand for precision and perfect fit is visibly higher. (In an early

precursor of the yellow sculpture, Pfannkuchentheorie [Pancake theory], (1986), the textile skin still gathered in

folds around its roof-batten core.) And yet they are nothing more – and nothing less – than what they are: roof

battens under stretched canvas. No metaphorical depth, no deceptive play. Perhaps these different bodies

of work are not so dissimilar in essence as they might first appear. In both cases, one is confronted with the

challenge of sheer, visible fact. Whether through total exposure or concealed form, the urge to interpret leads

one astray.

The all-too-human urge to cement meaning through interpretation also accompanies the caviar paintings that

Georg Herold has produced since the late 1980s – which comes as little surprise, given how closely luxury and

the profane converge in them. They can certainly be read as a wry commentary on the value of art, and on the

tendency to measure a work’s significance by its material worth – especially within a system in which factors

such as canvas size or the so-called “artist factor”, based on reputation and influence, determine a painting’s

market price. Caviar as currency, then.

Yet for Herold, caviar is above all one thing: an exceptional painting medium. Enhanced with mica or mother-of-pearl, it becomes visible as it floats in the binder across the surface, settles, accumulates, and condenses, forming contours and shapes that the expansively gestural application of  paint alone could not produce. Sequences of numbers – hovering between code and numerology (and once involving the meticulous counting of every single grain of caviar) – complete the compositions with delicate shades of grey.

Viewing Herold’s paintings, one oscillates between reading, seeing, and sensing the trace of

physical movement. Which brings us back to the uncertainty principle: the insight that, at the smallest scale of

quantum reality, material things fluctuate between different states of observation – between particle and wave,

position and momentum. Never can both be determined at once. In such a system, the desire to locate stable

meaning is something each of us must bear. For as in quantum physics, so too in Herold’s paintings: there is no

ultimate truth. Nowhere.

– Patrizia Dander