Simple ideas charmingly executed in Christoph Niemann's new drawings

My colleague Emily Gosling wrote a great piece for the latest issue of our Printed Pages magazine in which she called out the patent nudity of the emperor by saying that in reality, the creative process can be pretty dull to witness. Obviously that’s not to say that we want to see slick creative work with all traces of the artist removed; in fact in our digitally-defined age we delight in being able to see the spirit of the image-maker writ large.

That’s how I feel about these tremendous new drawings from Christoph Niemann, produced for his show at Berlin’s Galerie Max Hetzler. Created using only pencil and paper (sometimes pages obviously removed from a standard notebook), they combine Christoph’s wit and draughtsmanship in a really charming way. But what makes these really special is the intimacy; I can almost hear the scratch of lead on paper as I look at them and the ideas contained within the series – by turns, silly, poignant and mischievous – could be being whispered straight from Christoph himself.

Es gibt nicht gutes is at the Max Hetzer Gallery until 30 May.