Original Mixed Media on Canvas, 48"W x 60"H
Featured by RH | Available in RH Galleries worldwide
 
Echoes of Stillness is a meditation on presence—where silence is not empty, but resonant. Inspired by the raw poetry of brutalist concrete walls, the work captures what remains after sound has faded: memory, weight, and time embedded in surface.
 
Christian Klingeler approaches the canvas as an architectural plane rather than a pictorial space. Layers of black, charcoal, ash, and fractured whites are built, scraped, and reworked, mimicking the erosion and weathering of concrete exposed to decades of human existence. The palette is intentionally restrained, allowing subtle tonal shifts to emerge slowly, like light moving across a monolithic structure at dusk.
 
Texture plays a central role. Thick, tactile passages collide with thinner, ghosted veils of paint, creating a surface that feels excavated rather than painted. Marks appear both deliberate and accidental—scratches, abrasions, and softened edges suggesting past gestures that linger beneath the present moment. These traces act as visual echoes, reinforcing the dialogue between what is seen and what is felt.
 
The composition resists symmetry, favoring tension and imbalance. Light seems to push forward from within the darkness, yet never fully escapes it. This quiet push and pull mirrors the title itself: stillness that carries sound, silence that speaks.
 
In Echoes of Stillness, Klingeler invites the viewer to slow down and inhabit the work. It is not an image to be read quickly, but a surface to be experienced—one that rewards prolonged observation and emotional openness. Like a brutalist wall bearing the imprint of time, the painting stands as a testament to endurance, restraint, and the beauty found in what remains unspoken.