In a now well-known interview, Gerhard Richter once reacted quite indignantly to the question of what he thinks about while painting. His argument: thinking is painting. In Kevin Lüdicke’s work, precisely this inseparability can be vividly observed—not only in his handling of format, support, and composition, but even prior to painting itself: in his ballpoint pen drawings. Created while on the move—in the park, after work, on vacation, never in the studio—and always in the same small Polaroid format, they are not preparatory sketches or compositional studies, but rather mental-emotional preliminaries. A kind of: Paratext.¹

In his second solo exhibition at Galerie Gegen & Lücke, Lüdicke brings together drawing, painting, and sculpture/installation into a constellation that bridges longing, drive, and habit. For the first time in Lüdicke’s practice, the human body appears as both object and counterpart. This occurs in the paintings as well as in the eponymous sculpture: a diver—in his posture an inverted cross—becomes a fountain. The sacred negation is as palpable as the promise inherent in the figure: the leap as longing, flight as a state between control and surrender. A distinctly contemporary mode, dissolved in the lightness of the humorous fountain adaptation.²

In the paintings, we encounter a multitude of references—for example, the black-and-white zigzag floor from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks or the Ouroboros figure in the form of a serpent belt. The works also refer to one another: geometric forms migrate from one painting to the next, where they become an awning in front of a naked torso. Surrealism meets Constructivism, and the principle of collage encounters a liberated compositional logic. “The great enigma” that painting represents for Lüdicke himself becomes visible—and productive—in these works.

Yet all this productivity exists under the overarching uncertainty of life: death. This greatest of all ambiguities finds form particularly in Lüdicke’s Algae Bouquet (2026). Flower still lifes stand within the art-historical tradition of memento mori, a reminder of death as a spur to the will to live. Lüdicke sharpens this symbolism and translates it into a present afflicted by the climate crisis: algae as a future alternative source of human nourishment, presented as ornamental flowers in a vase, yet at the same time floating on water, leading the viewer to assume they are being kept alive. It is these work-immanent rotations of reflection that make engaging with Lüdicke’s works so extraordinarily rewarding.

Text: Marcus Boxler

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1 While Gérard Genette still understood the “paratext” as “that accessory through which a text becomes a book and as such [...] comes before the public,” media studies have since detached this concept from structuralist literary theory and expanded it to other textual contexts: cinema, series, music albums, exhibitions. In Kevin Lüdicke’s work, the concept of the paratext materialises as a fundamental way of thinking and working with motifs, composition, and medium. It is therefore only fitting that the exhibition’s invitation card appears in the same format as the drawings: as a Polaroid photograph.

2 It should not go unmentioned here that flowing water and fountains carry profound significance, especially in Christian symbolism: Jacob’s Well, baptism, canthari in the atriums of early Christian basilicas, fons vitae, and so on.