Stephan Berg (1994)

Of course, one could take a long sweeping approach and tell the story of the painter Bert Jäger: from the cool geometrical beginnings that exploded into an expressive burst of colour in the early 1960s to the subsequent departure from painting that lasted more than twenty years and the move towards writing and photography; lastly, the new beginnings in painting prompted by an exhibition of his early works at the Museum für Neue Kunst in Freiburg in late 1986, a return to that specific medium that has not faltered since. It would be a long story, and one that could not be told without mentioning the disruptions, the suffering and the existential upheavals of that life.

But this article is not about that story, not only because it has already been summed up a few times already, but also because it might distract from the elementary and unconditional force with which this work comes to us with what is actually its one and only subject, namely painting. These onslaughts of painting radically and unconditionally sweep away all that stands in their way in terms of contextualisation, attempts at appeasement and annexation. Regardless of its vocabulary, which clearly references Art Informel and gestural abstract expressionism, this style of painting professes neither a connection to tradition nor a departure from it. Completely self-absorbed, it aims for nothing other than to assert its own reality.