BLACK & WHITE GALLERY is very pleased to present Nightology by Swiss artist Stefan à Wengen.

The exhibition title Nightology alludes to the Romantic tradition that so often set its sights on shadowed and obscure worlds. Stefan à Wengen uses the seemingly clear, but in reality deeply enigmatic pictorial language to reflect upon our relationship to the world and the consequences of spiritual and social isolation in contemporary cultures. The paintings come alive through the intense poetic power à Wengen unleashes, first in himself as he is placing common objects that trigger collective memory into deserted landscapes, and then in us as we continue the work-in-progress of reading meaning into them. In doing that his motifs transmit into a highly complex network of relationships, which are both visual and substantive in nature, in which constructive conflicts arise between what is shown and what is intended. 

Stefan à Wengen (*1964) is a graduate of the School of Design, Basel, Switzerland (1986). He has shown his work in numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout Europe. He is the recipient of the prestigious Kiefer-Hablitzel-Stipendium (1987/1988) and Swiss Art Award (1989/2000). His work is in many private and museum collections, such as Museum of Art, Basel, Switzerland; The Peter Stuyvesant-Collection, The Netherlands; Museum of Art Lucerne, Switzerland; Ricola-Collection, Laufen, Switzerland; The Sanders-Collection, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Stefan à Wengen lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany. This is his first solo exhibition in the US.

The exhibition is accompanied by a hardcover catalogue with texts by Julian Heynen (curator of the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 2003 and 2005, co-curator of the Shanghai Biennial in 2008) and Raymund Weyers (Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cologne).