Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition, Raimund Girke. The Silent Balance. Following In Between White, in 2015 (Hong Kong), and Dominanz des Lichts in 2018 (Wijnegem, Belgium), this will be the gallery’s third solo presentation of the late artist’s work. The Silent Balance builds on the gallery’s exploration of Girke’s monochrome paintings and work from the last two decades to highlight various aspects of Girke’s complete oeuvre. The line is a constant in the selection of the artworks—as a motif that recurs both in his early large-format work and in his later, darker and more intimate paintings. "Countless words count less than the silent balance between yin and yang”, is a well-known quote from the sixteenth-century BC Chinese philosopher Laozi (or Lao Tzu), from which this exhibition takes its name. Girke was, in many ways, very inspired by Laozi’s wisdom, particularly in which the contradictions in things and the search for balance are central. A key tenet of this knowledge if a belief that things don’t change in a progressive way—they do in a constant cycle. A well-known dynamic process from Taoism are yin and yang: the two opposites that are in the unknown universe, the Tao. However, the concepts cannot occur separately: darkness only distinguishes itself in brightness.