At the opening of his Tölz exhibition “Symbolic Art – From East to West”, the gallery owner Nour Nouri from Hamburg, originally from Iran, made it clear that he is convinced that “art can change and connect something with its power”, but not through provocation, but through mutual understanding and international understanding. To this end, he juxtaposed artists such as Günther Uecker, Wang Shaojun and Natalja Nouri, whose backgrounds, cultures, experiences and views could hardly be more different. For this, moderator Christine Adler described Nouri as a “networker for human encounters.”

Uecker is one of the most important German artists of the post-war period

Günther Uecker, one of the most important German artists of the post-war period, is 92 years old and is represented in the exhibition by several lithographs. The artist from Mecklenburg had to go through difficult experiences regarding the war as a child and teenager. In his works, the “Peace Commandments”, he uses quotations from the Old and New Testaments, the Koran and the Hebrew Torah.
If Uecker was unable to attend for reasons of age, in the case of the Chinese painter and sculptor Wang Shaojun it was probably the Corona pandemic and tense East-West relations that prevented his personal participation. The Hamburg art historian Marc Cremer-Thursby, who gave an expert and generally understandable introduction to the work of the three artists, interpreted Wang Shaojun’s paintings and formal language against the background of Zen Buddhism.

Nouri’s paintings: with geometric structures and an almost mathematical order

Nataja Nouri is a Latvian artist. Her art works are eye-catchers in this exhibition. Latvia is a small Baltic state that gained its independence from the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Today, the country is a member of the EU and NATO. In terms of its culture, Latvia is marked by influences from Scandinavia and the North German Hanseatic League. Natalja Nouri’s work is primarily concerned with spiritual themes and focuses on the duality of man between body and spirit, good and evil. Her impressive paintings, which are characterized by symmetrical structures and a clear order, contain numerous theological, cosmological, cabbalistic and nature-mystical allusions and symbols.

Souces: Merkur.de