Nikolaus Moser o.T. #6 120 x 180 cm

Galerie Ernst Hilger Dorotheergasse 5 1010 Vienna Austria (city map) Send E-mail tel +43-(0)1-512 53 15 www.hilger.at

In the exhibition "Dialog II", the Galerie Ernst Hilger is showing a selection of large-format works in oil by Nikolaus Moser. The exhibition is intended as a continuation and augmentation of the exhibition "Dialog I" of December 2008, in which most of the exhibits were works on paper and smaller oil pictures. Whether small or square or in a wall-filling format, Moser's works are hymns to colour throughout; he spreads space-filling colour fields or impetuous dabs of colour in expressive gestures across the canvas. Applied layer upon layer and ignoring the restricting margins of the canvas, Moser's works appear as a feast of colour verging upon the sculptural; the colour is not a surrogate of a extra-pictorial reference, but stands for itself alone. Moser's comment on this: "The colour as such is mysterious in the emotion it excites within us, so I use it in this manner, not only for the sake of painting, but for the narrative effect it disseminates, from its own nature, from its inner, mysterious power." The evolutionary process consists in a repeated observation, testing, altering, correcting and condensing of the pictures. For Peter Baum, this process corresponds to the "thought of a progressive, renewable work, evident in larger contexts.