When a painter embroiders a canvas, it is hard not to wonder what this technique—in a sense, drawing with a needle—means in terms of content. In the case of Michael Raedecker, it seems to have been a radical gesture against tradition, at least initially. When he started out as a painter in the 1990s, Raedecker developed an almost obstinate way of working, penetrating the canvas with a needle, mixing paint with thread. This was partly to tease the audience, by overstating the allegedly corny character of painting, but also to create space for himself in a medium that was surrounded by

When Joanna Kamm announced, in July, that her gallery would close at the end of September, an exhibition by German painter Bernd Ribbeck—his fourth with Kamm—had already been slotted for that month. A September show coincides with important events on the local calendar such as Berlin Art Week and the art fair abc art berlin contemporary. Although nothing about the show overtly registered that it would be the gallery’s last, the fact turned out to be inadvertently pertinent.

Ribbeck’s small-format abstract paintings are usually rendered on MDF with acrylic paint and ballpoint pen, the