In contemporary art, traditional media are often tasked with solving new problems, while classical challenges are addressed using new methods. The exhibition "Flat Media" brings together three artistic approaches that redefine dimensionality and blur the boundaries between perception, materiality, and medium. Linus Rauch, Ria Patricia Röder, and Aaron Scheer explore the intersection of the analog and digital, challenging conventional understandings of focus, blur, and spatial depth.

Linus Rauch’s works, though rooted in the language of painting, eschew brushes and heavy paint application. Instead, he employs minimalist forms and subtle gradations of light and shadow, creating compositions that hover between presence and absence. In one of his pieces, a monochrome, almost vaporous rectangle floats within the frame, its contours dissolving into the surrounding space. This interplay of sharpness and ambiguity recalls the atmospheric sensibilities of artists like Mark Rothko or Agnes Martin, who also sought to evoke emotional resonance through restrained formal vocabularies.

Ria Patricia Röder’s scanograms transform physical objects into digital imagery, capturing two- and three-dimensional forms through the scanning process. Her works distort familiar objects, rendering them simultaneously recognizable and alien. One scanogram presents abstracted fragments of texture and form, their sharpness juxtaposed against soft gradients, evoking the experimental photography of Bauhaus artists like László Moholy-Nagy. Röder’s practice challenges the notion of photography as a static documentation, positioning her works as sculptural impressions frozen in digital flux.

Aaron Scheer engages with digital painting as a medium, merging collage, layering, and algorithmic processes to construct fragmented yet cohesive compositions. His works feature overlapping planes of color, fragmented text, and digital detritus, creating visual fields that mimic the chaos of contemporary digital interfaces. In one piece, graphic elements and distorted textures create an almost tactile digital collage, reminiscent of David Hockney’s later experiments with iPad drawings. Scheer’s practice highlights the collision of physical tactility and virtual abstraction, posing questions about the materiality of the digital age.

The juxtaposition of these three artistic approaches invites viewers to reconsider the dynamics of spatiality and perception. Conventionally, our eyes process focus and blur to interpret depth and proximity, allowing us to understand spatial relationships. However, the works in "Flat Media" disrupt these rules. By manipulating sharpness, layering, and the interplay of dimensions, the artists explore alternative ways of perceiving and experiencing space. What happens when the conventional frameworks for understanding depth and materiality are suspended?

This exploration aligns with broader art historical dialogues. Rauch’s meditative compositions echo the transcendental minimalism of Rothko and Martin, while Röder’s scanograms recall the avant-garde experimentation of Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus. Scheer’s digital collages engage with contemporary concerns of technology and its aesthetic implications, reflecting a lineage from Pop Art’s engagement with mass media to the present-day digital vernacular. Together, their works form a cohesive investigation into the evolving relationship between materiality, perception, and medium.