Faced with a time that, like magic, incessantly reproduces itself in a purely affirmative manner and in which everything historical seems to spread out on an unlimited, uniform surface ... Faced with a time of permanent illumination and demystification of life, we should direct our gaze to the dark side beyond all the glistening surfaces. So let us save ourselves in the darkness. For it can be understood as a last refuge from the processes of harmonisation of the world that are cleverly camouflaged in the flow of its spread. The escape into the art-immanent thicket of the night is an attempt at isolation in order to counter the visual overpowering and appropriation of an eternal daylight. This exhibition turns away from a self-referential, almost incapacitated present as well as from an art production that only knows how to reflect our time in any direction - and which thus likes to invoke the attitude of anything goes that was once proclaimed as postmodern and devouring everything. Rather, the artists in this exhibition are united by a reflection on an intellectual approach to artistic technique, on the tradition of Romanticism, Impressionism, Symbolism or Surrealism. They thoughtfully actualise the art-historical complexity of their motifs and styles and ultimately also the reception of time. They create an alternative world, a place of indeterminacy, of retrospective concentration, which creates space for reflection on regressive processes that are necessarily associated with melancholy, loss, nightmare, destruction, a state of trance. This night side of reason calls for an artist who knows how to absorb the immanent movements of art history and at the same time insists on his melancholic, highly reflected imaginative, offside world. He insists on finding reality through the establishment of boundaries that cannot be overcome even by technical processes and are thus resistant to simulation and media reutilisation. Turning away from our constantly illuminated, illuminated world thus strengthens us in our attempt to enter the refuge of darkness, into a forest full of immanent reference possibilities of art. Symbolically branching out, contemplatively tuned, immersed in a mysterious silence, the protected gaze can lose itself in the artist's unique imaginations that have become images and bring time to a standstill, at least for a short time. In this way, the magical, contemplative experience in front of the work of art can once again be assigned the leading role in contemporary art.