Untitled 1978

Lothar Charoux made this unnamed artwork with simple materials, but a complex, considered eye. There's an elegant tension between the dark ground and the hovering geometry, those crisp, floating squares. I imagine Charoux wrestling with the idea of perfection, perhaps using the grid as a system to find order in chaos or maybe to reveal the limitations of such systems. He’s got these ruled lines but they are almost hand-drawn. They make me think of Agnes Martin, but moodier, more contained. I wonder what it might have been like to stand in his studio as he made it. What was he thinking? Was he using a ruler? Did he ever go off-grid and need to correct his mistakes? Did he see something in the dark? Ultimately, painting, for me, is about entering a dialogue, and Charoux invites me to consider ideas of structure, space, and quiet contemplation.