The idea of painting a cactus came to Zeilner’s mind during the epidemic. The creation of the painting was preceded, as usual, by many drawing studies in Viennese cafés and arranging a well-thought-out composition. As in most of the painter’s recent works, the blank space dominates the white canvas, evoking associations with Japanese art. The cactus is presumably near or on the windowsill, with the window defined by a minimalist blue line. The painting reveals the artist’s talent for synthesis – shorthand – and the confidence of the hand guiding the line. However, the work is not devoid of emotion. The transparent pot reflects the sun’s rays. The plant itself, however, from the viewer’s point of view, is more black rather than green, and the shadow vests the composition with a dramatic character and perhaps points to the existential content encoded beneath the smooth surface of the painting. In addition to described work, the exhibition also includes the painter’s drawings, in which the lines – thickened more densely than in the Cactus painting – reflect and transform what has been seen and remembered by the artist in an equally mysterious way. Also these works from Gerlind Zeilner are characterised by a poetics of understatement and allusion expressed through lines.