Opening reception
Thursday, 31.10. 18:00-21:00 | 19:00 official welcome and introductory speech by Dr. Anne Simone Kiesiel, art historian, author, curator from Hamburg

The „Poesie der Ferne“ (poetry of distance) that we find in Mathias Roloff's landscape works arises from the sensitive coordination of partly luminous, partly pastel muted color fields and their dramaturgical intersection with lines, planes, paths. It is about the horizon and the appeal to our gaze through the organic space stretching into the distance. Developed from color and conceived from the abstract, the landscapes oscillate between dissolution and emergence and play with the fantasy of surreal or fantastic imagination. The artist describes his paintings as “timeless refuges with subtle references to human civilization. They follow the longing for seclusion and inspire reflection and self-awareness”. 

During his studies at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he graduated in 2006, Mathias Roloff studied Flemish-Dutch landscape and still life painting from the 16th century, Mannerism and Paul Klee's theory on the abstraction of color fields and magic squares. Paintings such as “Der Übergang” (2021), “Morgendliche Träumerei” (2022) and “Stiller Pfad über die Anhöhe” (2024) show how originally he creates independent and memorable pictorial worlds with these painting traditions behind him. They seem tailor-made for new myths between reality and dream. 

In the Berlin Salon, Roloff is showing the group of works entitled “Evolution of Urbanity”, in which individual trees or groups of trees in photographs of Berlin streets and public squares have been separated from the urban background. The artist isolates the characteristic appearance of the trees by painting over and scratching out the surroundings. The result is “tree portraits”. We have never and will never be able to see our city trees like this: against the expanse of an open sky. He transforms these silent witnesses of the urban world, to which attention is rarely paid, into new fantastic environments. For example, who knows the sycamore at Ku'damm no. 228, central island? We will go in search of it! 

Mathias Roloff was born in Berlin-Pankow in 1979. Since 2000 he has studied painting and graphics at the Berlin University of the Arts, graduating as a master student in 2006 under Volker Stelzmann. Since 2000 he has been studying and working in Italy (Rome, Naples, Florence, Prato) and has presented his work at national and international exhibitions, including in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt/Main, Halle, Munich, Naples, Palermo, Poznan, Rome and Washington. In 2002 he worked as an assistant stage designer at the Berlin State Opera. Mathias Roloff has been a member of the cultural advisory board of the Lichtenberg district office in Berlin since 2017, where he advises the district office on the development of the district's art and cultural scene, is a member of the jury for the district cultural fund, realizes initiatives in the areas of art in public space and cultural education and urban development. His works can be found in the collections of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin, Gerhart Hauptmann Museum Erkner, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt/M and Leipzig, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek Weimar, among others.