Symbolic art moves between abstract painting and visual language. Signs, pictograms and graphic elements appear in the images and form their own layer within the painting. They function like fragments of a code or traces of a visual language that only reveals itself through the interplay of forms and colors.

Many of these works arise from working with leftover paint, fragments, and spontaneous painterly processes. Signs do not appear as fixed symbols with a clear meaning, but as open pictorial forms. They may recall familiar pictograms, simple graphic markings, or accidental traces in the painting process.

Particularly in series such as Der Farbkasten or Schmiertafel, such sign structures become clearly apparent. Color fields, fragments, and symbol-like forms overlap and create complex pictorial spaces in which abstract painting and visual signs merge with one another.

Symbolic art thus opens up a special form of viewing images. Between color, structure and signs, an open visual language emerges that leaves room for different interpretations.

Signs as visual language

In many of these works, signs, markings and symbolic forms move to the foreground. They appear like fragments of a visual language that develops within abstract painting and opens up new spaces of meaning.

Series Paint Box and Smear Board

The Paint Box and Smear Board series explore the interplay of color, fragment and sign. Pictograms, symbolic forms and spontaneous markings become part of the painterly process and develop into independent pictorial elements within the composition.

The following works present a selection of symbolic paintings from various series of my practice.