As much as Christoph M. Gais does not fight riotous battles with masses of paint, he loves heavy, barky, rudimentary colour relief. Of course, it is possible to work on the first picture level with thin layers of paint. Gais, however, wants resistance on the painting surface and so this level is already created as a light relief. The colour-sculptural sweeps on the second level open up the painting's skin further; they are intended to "eat" their way over the rough ground of the first, similar to an inverted sgraffito drawing. Gais, who also scrapes and scrapes off in his work, sets the tendril work covering the picture skin in a sublime, positive manner. It is from this paint-intensive working method of tearing open and covering up that the pictures logically derive their relief character. Gais not only wants the viewer's gaze to be penetrating, he wants it to be penetrating. (Text: Hermann Wiesler)