The title “Bright Shadows” appears at first glance to be a clear oxymoron. In our minds, a shadow is dark; it is the place where light is completely absent or swallowed. However, Thomas Scheibitz handles this contradiction quite intentionally; because, contrary to our conventional perception, a shadow is a remarkably colorful and vibrant world in its own right.
The name of the exhibition is less a simple play on words and more a conceptual proposition that draws attention to a powerful tool of representation often overlooked in the art of painting. In the classical tradition of painting, a shadow is born not from pure black pigment, but from the complex combination of all other colors; thus, it is an uncanny game established between absence and presence. For Scheibitz, the shadow is almost a space or a landscape unto itself. In the artist’s paintings, this sensation is conveyed to the viewer through contours appearing as narrow silhouettes—the thin, vibrating boundary line between one color field and another.
A Limbo Between Recognizability and Alienation
Feeding equally on the mundanity of daily life and the heavy heritage of art history, Scheibitz masterfully distills the images accumulated in this vast pool, transforming them into paintings with intense, vivid colors and ambiguous sculptures that do not fully reveal their forms. Everything familiar and known becomes increasingly compressed during this process, ultimately losing its recognizability and evolving into something entirely different and strange.
This uninterrupted act of transformation is the most fundamental element defining Scheibitz’s art. An object or scene in his works is brought to that uncanny point of tension exactly halfway between recognizability and absolute alienation and left right there. Neither entirely abstract nor fully figurative… it remains deliberately suspended in that limbo between the two poles. This is precisely why the artistic dialogue the artist recently established with Picasso at the Museum Berggruen was so apt; for Picasso also probed the boundaries of form with a similar persistent curiosity and uncompromising nature.
A Maturing Gallery-Artist Dialogue
Bright Shadows presents the viewer with a collection of recent and brand-new works by the artist spanning from 2017 to the present. This exhibition by Sprüth Magers, a gallery that spans continents including Berlin, London, and Los Angeles, is one of the finest examples of the deep and long-term relationship a prestigious gallery builds with the artists it represents. Their first meeting dates back to 2008; today, each of the layered paintings filling those gallery walls is a clear reflection of this powerful dialogue that has matured over the years.
If you are in London, do not miss this visual and conceptual feast. The exhibition closes on May 16.
- Venue: Sprüth Magers, London
- Exhibition: Bright Shadows
- Dates: Running until May 16, 2026
