Gary Kuehn is one of the major exponents of Process Art, who radically changed the concept of art in the 1960s. Since the beginning of his career, simple shapes such as circles, squares or triangles have formed the basis of his artistic positions, in conjunction with his interest in crafts and industrial materials. The floor sculpture «The Sex of Heavenly Bodies» (1996) shows an open ring shape, thus exploring the tension between limitation and freedom. Formally, the wooden sculpture, coated with epoxy resin and graphite, ties in with the reduction of Kuehn's early works of «Mattress» or «Melt Pieces» from 1965-68. These works were presented on wooden blocks, inherently influencing their shapes. Kuehn borrowed the title from a cultural-anthropological essay by Claude Lévi-Strauss, who wrote about the polarity of sexes of the moon and the sun (Le sexe des astres, 1973). This reference adds an additional level of physicality and emotionality to the formally abstract work.

Keith Sonnier, who died in July 2020, rose to fame in the 1960s by expanding the traditional understanding of sculpture and using everyday materials such as neon, latex, foam or found industrial materials in his work. His continuous experimentation with light as an artistic medium resulted in sculptures and room installations with directly or indirectly illuminated elements. In the mid-1990s, Sonnier created his «Tidewater Series», illustrating his versatile use of neon tubes. In his work «Los La Butte» (1994), Sonnier combined a yellow fluorescent tube with metal, fabric and plastic objects. The playful line of the neon tube directly contrasts the objects and packagings found by the artist in the vicinity of his parents' house. The composition of the individual elements, along with the form of presentation on the base, creates a sensual and almost figurative association.

In the mid-1970s, David Reed converted the expressive gesture of the brushstroke into an artificial and highly controlled representation of «the brushstroke». While in Abstract Expressionism, the visible brushstroke was utilized for the artist's personal introspection, David Reed transformed it into an object of analysis and manipulation. For his solo exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2016, the artist created a four-part series of extraordinarily formatted works, shown for the first time in Europe at the New Museum in Nuremberg last year, presenting associated drawings, color studies and a video film with a manipulated scene from the pilot film for the US television series Miami Vice. The work «#659», showing at the fair, is the central work of this series and is characterized by transparent, light surfaces as well as rich yellow and blue tones in connection with striking «brushstroke» elements.

Gary Kuehn, Keith Sonnier and David Reed all have a special bond to the Rhineland through the gallery owner, art collector and co-founder of Art Cologne, Rolf Ricke, as this is where their first solo exhibitions in Europe took place.

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