Miltos Manetas’ installation Soft Driller, 1995, reconstructs an episode that occurred some ten years ago in Athens. Using video and photography, the artist recounts a story in which all action has apparently been suspended. This immobility results from an explicit conflict, which is mirrored by the contradictory title of the piece.

In the video two men appear, seated alone at a small table in a bar, smoking and taking sips of coffee. Without ever really looking each other in the face, they gaze pensively around the room. Their faces betray no emotion, although one can hear a murmured threat:

Since the ’60s, Gotthard Graubner has called his paintings Farbraumkörper—colored spatial bodies—and no term could better describe his work. Like many artists of his generation, he began his career by reacting against the spontaneity of art informel. But Graubner numbers among the few who have remained faithful to their original stylistic choices with coherence and rigor while retaining the power to surprise.

Though these paintings attempt to transform space into something palpable, solid, they also seem to consist purely of light. Graubner constructs his works—which are sometimes very large—by