The body of work Black Series I + II: Und Nachbarschaft der Farben marks a significant phase in Helmut Federle’s engagement with

reductive painting, serial structure, and the relational dynamics of colour perception. Although black formally dominates these works, colour is not negated; rather, it is understood as context-dependent, emerging through adjacency, contrast, and spatial tension within the pictorial field.

Federle’s painting deliberately operates at the threshold between abstraction, sign-like form, and architectural order. Geometric configurations appear both precise and vulnerable, functioning less as autonomous shapes than as carriers of perceptual processes. The reduction of means directs attention to proportion, rhythm, and the subtle interplay between surface, line, and chromatic density.

In this sense, the Black Series can be read as a reflection on painting itself. Colour is employed not primarily as an expressive category but as a structuring element of a visual field in which perception, temporality, and spatial experience become closely intertwined.