BEN WILLIKENS (*1939 Leipzig) is a master of perspective, light and shadow. He creates paintings that explore a room's historic, social and existential dimensions.

In 1969, at the age of thirty, an illness requires an in-patient stay of almost a year. The institution's anonymity shapes the young artist. This grave crisis causes a shift in his approach of themes. A room as metaphor for the human state of mind becomes his trademark: with renaissance-like craftsmanship, deserted interiors kept strictly in grey, white and black fnd their way into BEN WILLIKENS' pictorial world. The series Anstaltsbilder (Institution Images) comes into being.

BEN WILLIKENS creates multiple groups of works on the subject of the historic room. In ORTE (PLACES) (from 1996 onwards) he visits diferent National Socialism's centres of power. In 1999, he creates Räume der Moderne (Spaces of Modernity) which stands in opposition to ORTE (PLACES): the series addresses key works of Modernist architecture, interpreting Mies van der Rohe to Gerrit Rietveld and Richard Neutra. He even shows us Piet Mondrians Paris studio (Raum 1398, Raum 1399 in this exhibition). A room as a metaphor for the human mental state par excellence, as Mondrian was known for living in a studio apartment entirely modelled after his principles of design. For the frst time BEN WILLIKENS includes colour in his work: like the real Mondrian apartment, the canvas shows geometric forms in red, yellow and blue.

If one is familiar with Richard Neutra's life and work, BEN WILLIKENS' enthusiasm over the Austrian- American architect becomes intelligible. He saw ''architecture as a perceptible event, becoming medicine for body, mind and soul''. His style is characterised by free foor plans, sliding doors and windows, glass walls reaching from foor to ceiling and huge window surfaces, thereby appearing like a constructed realisation out of BEN WILLIKENS' imagery.

Ben Willikens