The Stars of Painting
September 4, 2026 – October 15, 2026
, Wolfgang Oppermann
Galerie Hanna Bekker vom Rath
The gallery is exhibiting works by Wolfgang Oppermann, who taught for many years at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Since the 1970s, he has distilled artistic concepts, codes, and rituals into minimalist visual symbols that shed light on the language of the art world with equal parts precision and playful irony.
The exhibition is presented in cooperation with saasfee*pavillon, where the work of Anna Oppermann (1940–1993) will be on view at the same time.
Wolfgang Oppermann, born in Hamburg in 1937 and who died there in 2001, developed a distinctive visual language beginning in the 1960s, in which human figures are combined with geometric, technical, and typographic elements. Critiques of consumerism and the art world are recurring themes throughout his body of work. In his later, elaborate screenprints—“pictures without a brush,” created directly on canvas through multi-layered printing processes—he simultaneously subverted traditional notions of painting.
Oppermann’s artistic body of work encompasses printmaking, paintings, object art, installations, sound, and film. “ Die Galerie ” presents early graphic works, collages, kinetic objects, films, and examples from the series of small-format paintings from the 1990s drawn from his rich estate. The selection of works aims to illustrate how Oppermann positioned himself between Pop Art and Conceptual Art; particularly noteworthy are his connections to the then-current idea of seriality, his preference for quotations and paraphrases from popular culture, art history, and contemporary art; his kinetic objects inspired by experimental film; and his intensive studies of specific gestures and postures.
Here, the focus is on the gesture of crossed arms. Combined with a double knot, Bruce Nauman created “Untitled” in 1967, an assemblage made of wax and ropes (now in the Daros Collection, Switzerland). This inspired “Wopp”—as Oppermann was known—in many ways: from a homage to the aforementioned American model to the Superman figure from the comic book and a self-portrait. The striking gesture is more than just an isolated graphic form: it embodies an attitude in the face of the need for self-confidence and resilience in the often precarious life of an artist. As a co-founder of the CO-OP Artists’ Cooperative in Hamburg, which was formed in 1968, Oppermann was part of a generation that critically reflected on the art world. Wopp repeatedly addressed the artist’s existence and the market conditions of art production in a satirical and humorous manner. Some motifs resemble cartoons with pithy, short captions. For example, a Picasso lookalike encounters the singer Marya Delvard, co-founder of the Munich experimental theater group “Elf Scharfrichter” (1901–1904), as she was depicted in a program booklet by one of its members, the artist and *Simplicissimus* illustrator Thomas Theodor Heine (1867–1948). The bald man says to the stern-looking lady: “I don’t want to do art—I want to be happy.”
Contact:
Anja Döbritz-Berti
kontakt@galeriehannabekkervomrath.de