You are warmly welcome to our next opening.
Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX presents the exhibition
Bright Glimmers on Sombre Hues
Artists: Peter Boué, Sampsa Indrén, Mika Karhu
Opening Fri 31 July 2026: 6–10 pm
Open on Kolonie Weekend
Sat 1.8.: 2–5 pm
Sun 2.8.: 2–5 pm
Exhibition: 1.–21.8.2026
Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm1.8.–21.8.2026
Light never exists in isolation. It becomes perceptible only in its encounter with shadow. Likewise, the world does not disclose itself as a completed whole but through fractures, interruptions, and fleeting illuminations that emerge from the darker fabric of experience. Bright Glimmers on Sombre Hues explores these fragile moments—not as opposites to darkness, but as possibilities that arise from within it.
The works gathered in this exhibition resist reconciliation. They inhabit a terrain where meaning remains unfinished and reality refuses stable interpretation. Their luminous moments do not lead us beyond darkness; rather, they render its structure visible. Illumination here is neither revelation nor redemption, but a brief suspension in which the familiar world becomes estranged from itself, allowing another way of seeing to emerge.
In art, light is more than an optical phenomenon; it is a mode of thought. It marks the instant when habitual perception falters and experience opens toward what has not yet been named. The artwork offers no resolution. Instead, it constructs a space in which the world may be encountered anew—not as an object to be mastered, but as an event unfolding between material, memory, history, and perception. Meaning resides neither in the work nor in the viewer alone, but in the dynamic relation that continually forms between them.
This exhibition rejects optimism as the antidote to darkness. Hope is conceivable only where the contradictions of the world remain visible. Beauty does not arise from promises of harmony but from the capacity to dwell within incompleteness without dissolving it into certainty. Every bright glimmer is a temporary interruption in the sombre hues of existence—a moment in which something still unnamed becomes perceptible.
Bright Glimmers on Sombre Hues invites us to remain within this tension. Light never abolishes shadow, nor does shadow extinguish light. Together they constitute the horizon through which experience acquires depth and complexity. In these fleeting illuminations, art reveals what conceptual thought alone cannot fully grasp: meaning does not exist beyond contradiction but emerges through its continuous movement.
Mika Karhu
Peter Boué
Artwork: Überrest, 2021, Fettkreide auf Karton | oil pastel on cardboard,, 70×100 cm
In ihrer Reduktion auf den Schwarz-Weiß-Kontrast führen die Zeichnungen die dargestellten Orte und Szenen auf ihre Grundelemente zurück. Zugleich rücken sie die magischen Momente, das üblicherweise Ausgeblendete in den Fokus. Sie leuchten den Wirklichkeitsgehalt des Surrealen aus. Sie suchen die Realität in einem Schattenreich. Der Schwarz-Weiß-Kontrast verstärkt den Charakter des Unwirklichen.
Der Schatten entstammt nicht einer konkreten Lichtquelle, er ist häufig deutlicher als der Gegenstand selbst beziehungsweise nimmt fast die Gestalt von Figuren an, mutiert zum aktiven Element. Ebenso erscheint das Licht in einer eigenen Gegenständlichkeit auf einer Skala zwischen Glimmen und gleißenden Flammen. So treten Licht und Schatten als Akteure auf, die ihr jeweiliges Erscheinungsbild aus sich selbst speisen. Mit Schattierungen modelliert Boué eine diffuse Gegenständlichkeit, die sich dem Auge zugleich anbietet und entzieht.
—————————
In their reduction to black-and-white contrast, the drawings reduce the depicted places and scenes to their basic elements. At the same time, they bring the magical moments, the things that are usually hidden, into focus. They illuminate the reality of the surreal. They seek reality in a realm of shadows. The black-and-white contrast reinforces the character of the unreal.
The shadow does not originate from a specific light source; it is often clearer than the object itself or almost takes on the form of figures, mutating into an active element. Similarly, light appears in its own objectivity on a scale between glimmering and glistening flames. Thus, light and shadow appear as actors that feed their respective appearances from within themselves. With shades, Boué models a diffuse objectivity that simultaneously presents itself to the eye and eludes it.