Water in Layers: Ulrike Schmelter at Galería Minkner

Layers instead of snapshots: mood meets palette knife

A short walk from the beach, a café with strong coffee and then the quiet door of the Galería Minkner: that is how an evening begins that suits Mallorca well. From Friday, September 5, the Galería de Arte Minkner on Avda. Rey Jaime I, 109 presents new works by the artist Ulrike Schmelter. Anyone expecting photorealistic clouds will be surprised — those looking for moods will stay longer.

Material, movement, melancholy

The first thing you notice: Schmelter does not paint with a fine brush. She layers paint, spreads it, rubs and shapes it with the palette knife. The surfaces are not smooth illusions but records of work: palette-knife traces, damp veils, folds in the paint. These repeated layers create a depth you can almost smell as you approach — a mix of sea air and fresh paint that lingers on the skin.

The motifs are simple: water, clouds, light. But simple here is not superficial. The paintings show calculation — perhaps a touch of mathematics that Schmelter brought from earlier dealings with numbers — and at the same time an impulsive delight in material. Nordic restraint meets Mediterranean luminosity: cool gray-blues, few but strong color accents, a mixture that seems to have arisen somewhere between Denia and Berlin.

Why the Minkner gallery is a good fit

The Minkner is not a museum with high halls but a compact space, ideal for works that act quietly. Here you don't have to fight tourist crowds; instead you can sit briefly on the steps outside, hear dogs passing by, smell the espresso from the corner café and then enter in peace. That is when the art unfolds properly: layer by layer, a gentle aftersound.

The opening runs from 5:00 to 8:00 PM. Afterwards the works are on view until October 16. The owner hangs with a confident eye — someone who knows how much space pictures need to breathe. So you can expect a small audience: time to look, time for a few words, perhaps a short exchange about technique or the weather.

What remains after the glance

The special thing about Schmelter's works is their ambivalence: they are neither pure landscapes nor abstract color exercises. In the layers you find traces of wind and drops, of condensation and dissolution. Sometimes a painting seems to capture the movement of a rolling band of clouds, then again the gentle dissolution of a wave at the edge of a beach.

For Mallorcans the evening is worthwhile because the pictures have something familiar — air, sea, changing light — and yet appear different: reduced, material-focused, lingering. For visitors the exhibition offers a chance to step briefly out of tourist mode and experience something that does not need to be explained immediately.

Practical tip: If you'd like to enjoy the corner café's coffee again, come about ten minutes earlier. That way you can form a first impression before you dive into the gentle world of water, clouds and palette-knife traces.