Thomas Wachholz (b.1984, Cologne) is a visual artist who lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
Wachholz’s paintings are intricate visual networks of formal traces and personal memories, structured through opaque colour fields, iconic symbols like stars and clouds, and grids outlined with geometric precision. By exploring the hidden dimensions of everyday materials, Wachholz distills the objects that inspire his work into a restricted palette of colours and shapes.
Many of his works feature striking surfaces created through the application of red phosphorus. At times, this element blankets an entire painting; in others, it takes abstract forms such as suns, radiating vertical lines, or the contours of larger shapes. The phosphorus grid, nearly dissolving into the composition’s geometry, symbolises the viewer’s role in “activating” the paintings through personal associations and memories.
His work has been exhibited widely, and has held notable solo exhibitions at Kunstverein, Heppenheim; Wentrup, Berlin; Galerie Ruttkowski;68, Cologne; THK Gallery, Cape Town; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles; Galerie Lange + Pult, Zürich; Ung5, Cologne; Nymphius Projekte, Berlin and Raebervon Stenglin, Zürich, Switzerland.