Via Negativa 2008

The composition is unmistakable: van Gogh’s Sunflowers — one of the most recognisable images in the canon. But here, all colour has been stripped away. What remains is the frame of the painting, not just visually, but conceptually: line, shape, placement — the architecture of presence without the flesh.

In the Christian mystical tradition, via negativa is the path to understanding through absence — through what God is not. Here, that idea becomes method. The act of removal is not a denial of van Gogh, but a form of reverence. By refusing colour, the painting lets us feel its loss more deeply — and in doing so, reveals the original in a new light.

This is not an appropriation or a reproduction. It’s an exorcism. A distillation. The painting does not show van Gogh’s flowers — it shows what happens when their colour, their vitality, their voice is taken away. And still, they remain.

Via Negativa becomes not just a title, but a technique. Meaning is not applied, but uncovered. Beauty is not added, but remembered. The silence of the image is its speech. What’s left is absence — full, deliberate, and undeniable.

Exhibited:

2009. A Blacker Gold, Haunch of Venison, Berlin

2010. Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

2018. 2018. The times they are a-changin. Galerie Bastian ,Berlin

Via Negativa

  • Oil on Canvas
  • 92.1 x 73 cm
  • 2008
Reinvention of Van Gogh's Sunflowers turned into black weeping blooms.

Blacker Gold exhibition 2009 Berlin

  • Installation view "Blacker Gold"
  • Berlin
  • 2009
9 Via Negativa paintings by  Mark Alexander displayed at Haunch of Venison gallery in Berlin in 2009.