Gerd Doege (Bilder), Ralf Schnell (Text): Und beende die Suche (Bild- und Kunstwissenschaften, Vol. 18, 2026)

Under the title Und beende die Suche, this book brings together artistic works by Gerd Doege alongside essays by Ralf Schnell to explore shared answers to the question “Who am I?”—a question that has served as a recurring theme in humanity’s search for itself over the course of millennia.

Human self-understanding, the conditions under which we live, the prerequisites on which we depend—these are existential problems that affect every single person, both as an individual and as a member of the human species. The proposals for their solution can be seen as a picture puzzle with an infinite variety of facets—a time-honored game. This intellectual game is played out in an anthropological hall of mirrors, where history and society, politics and the psyche sometimes clash abruptly and unexpectedly.

Religious and historical documents are examined alongside philosophical and literary works. The selection criteria are based on the representativeness of the works and their authors. They range from the Old Testament and the Upanishads, through the sutras and the Daodejing, to the very present day. The focus is on authors such as Omar Khayyam and Dante Alighieri, Montaigne and Shakespeare, Petrarch and Paracelsus, Pascal and Spinoza, Marcel Proust and Elfriede Jelinek.

The visual works corresponding to the essays in this volume are conceived as artistic visions of existence, focused on the momentum of aesthetic experience. They were created using various techniques and materials, experimentally tested, and continually revised.