Deserted Painting

The world is a light-dark. Some things are clear, many are unclear. What seems clear becomes blurred upon closer inspection, while the darkness gradually becomes a little clearer. Some things appear good, others bad. Here, too, the clear boundaries blur under closer observation. The darkness brightens, the brightness becomes mottled. Reality is mixed, a chiaroscuro. Knowledge attempts to make distinctions, to draw dividing lines. It seeks to illuminate and yet encounters obscurities, imperceptible, fluid transitions, gray areas, uncertainties, and interferences. Knowledge itself belongs to the chiaroscuro of reality, illuminating it in different ways and shading it accordingly. How can one observe what enlightenment leaves in the dark if one does not pay attention to the ambiguities at the edges? In the interplay of light and dark, we are dependent on observation and enlightenment, even if they themselves are not entirely clear. (Hannes Böhringer)