"Living is practically the opposite of expressing oneself. If the great Tuscan masters are right, living means testifying three times: in silence, in flames and immobile."

Albert Camus, from “The Desert”, in “Noces”, Paris: Les Éditions Gallimard, 1959

I think of the blue of the sky by Beato Angelico.

"What is this that we call “blue”? how can we think that? The same applies to death. We can’t talk about death and colors." Albert Camus

If this observation is correct, then we can hardly say anything about Ulrich Erben’s paintings, we just have to watch and remain silent. His works are nothing but the color or light that produces color. But light in this case is something different from lighting. Light means a state different from simple lighting and brightness. Ulrich Erben uses colored pigments to evoke the light that we perceive in nature during happy moments: at dusk, at dawn, in the rainbow, in the clouds or in the silvery glow of the sea. Through rigorous interventions in these luminous spaces - through lines and stripes that break the sharp edges of the image and sometimes they are lost - it acts as an awareness that cuts the dreamlike chromatic variations .. These orthogonal interventions make us very clear how Ulrich Erben is able to evoke the founding sweetness of the chromatic spaces on the canvas.

text by Helmut Friedel