From Tom Bullmann.

OSNABRÜCK. Although Zaki Al-Maboren has been living in Germany for 25 years, he does not deny his cultural roots: Almost all of the pictures currently exhibited in the gallery of producer Petra Höcker feature exotic mythical creatures, stylized animals and plants, or a West African deity in the form of a crocodile. Zaki Al-Maboren comes from Sudan.

The images he brought to Osnabrück were not painted but processed in a physically demanding procedure using a grinder and a diamond grinding tool. The reason: The wooden panels had been stored in an industrial paint shop for a year. The color particles present in the air during the painting process gradually settled on the plates, forming layers that soon took on a reddish-brown hue. From time to time, Al-Maboren inspected his objects, applied luminescent layers of paint himself, which were then covered again by the industrial paint. Then the actual artistic process followed: He worked on the extremely hard surface by sanding and grinding, uncovering hidden elements, and thus delving into the "memory of matter." Guided by the given structures and influenced by a small portion of chance, delicate landscapes emerged, teeming with animals and various creatures: bulls, reduced to the most important elements of form, fish frolicking with jellyfish underwater, or deciduous trees on the horizon. Here, a polar star shines; there, the artist adds accents by drilling small holes and filling them with paint. The pictures combine the African's fantastic visions with industrial processes and the surface-destroying craftsmanship of the German into an intense mixture. He created one picture in a different way: Using brightly shining colors, normally intended for filling fiber pens, he created an upside-down world: "Frankrot" is the title of a picture with the skyscrapers of the Main metropolis hanging at the top of the image.