FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PETER TOLLENS & MICHAEL TOENGES - PAINTINGS & WORKS ON PAPER

Along with JUNE SCHWARCZ - METAL VESSELS

The PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY is pleased to welcome painters Peter Tollens and Michael Toenges from Germany in their 4th solo exhibitions at the gallery. The artists reception is June 2, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. Also with Tollens and Toenges will be Ethnographic Artifacts from a private collection, and metal vessels from June Schwarcz.

Michael Toenges and Peter Tollens live and work in Germany. Their paintings reflect very different positions, yet both capture the pure sensual pleasure of color and material in abstract painting.

Peter Tollens, a Concrete painter, claims color supreme over image. Peter will be exhibiting a series of small format oil paintings on slate ranging from 1983 through 2004. Tollens applies vertical brush strokes using oil with pigment, laboriously building the surface to a rich impasto. The paintings have many surface fissures revealing the egg tempera ground in a complementary color. While the painting is non-referential, along with the titles, it is by no means analytical and rational. Using color as image, Tollens provokes our understanding of figure/ground relationships in rich subtle passages of paint - the difference in Tollens paintings is one of subject, not content.

In 2002 the Kolumba Museum in Cologne, Germany exhibited their collection of Peter Tollens paintings and works on paper. The exhibition included 200 works, spanning 25 years. The Albright Knox Art Gallery exhibition of The Natalie and Irving Forman Collection through July 3, 2005 feature several Peter Tollens paintings and books. Tollens is represented in collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

Michael Toenges small format paintings are jewels of abstraction. Each 12-inch painting embraces the beauty of rural and garden landscape. Toenges moves mountains of oil paint with grace and elegance leaving an ordered, yet completely unpredictable impression of life. His embrace of color in sensual collusion with material open the landscape well beyond the neat boundaries of the supporting structure. The evening closure of blooms, and the awakening of dawn are all realized in small, compelling paintings of Toenges.

In this exhibition Toenges will exhibit small, medium and large format paintings that as Michael tells, " contain no less than 7 or 8 paintings on each canvas."

Toenges has exhibited in Basel, New York, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Berlin and Belgium in the past year. He is represented in numerous private and museum collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND PRESS MATERIALS PLEASE CONTACT:

PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY 49 GEARY ST. SAN FRANCISCO CA 94108 415.788.5126. Gallery hours: Tuesday through Friday 11:00 - 5:30 pm, Saturday 11 - 5.