One of the focal points of the gallery's activities during the 1970's was the presentation of Concept Art with such artists as Douglas Huebler, Lawrence Weiner, On Kawara. Conceptual content, the questioning of the correlation between art and reality and reflection upon the context of art are to this day the common, cross-generation, cross-media link between the artists represented by the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery. The texts and compositions of Martin Creed, represented by the gallery since 2001, likewise follow in this tradition: subtle and frugal interventions in spatial relationships that bring about a lasting change in our perception of reality.

It was during the 1980s, following the inclusion of painting and photography in the gallery's programme, that the representational and the narratory, while retaining a critical approach to the medium, gained in significance. The photographic works of Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff, and also the films of Rodney Graham, not only fascinate the viewer through the depictive quality achievable with their respective medium but also keep themselves at a rational, analytical distance from him. In 1984, the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery commenced collaboration with its partner gallery in Cologne, the Johnen & Schöttle Gallery, which had opened in that same year.

The construction of identity, the relationship between memory and history, situations and places, are the themes, for example, of the works of Candida Höfer and James Coleman, the film installations of Anri Sala and David Claerbout, and thus enter into a direct dialogue with the works of such artists as Thomas Schütte and Dan Graham, who have been in the gallery's programme since its very beginnings.

Besides cultivating a programme of longstanding artists, the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery has a decisive interest in exploring new approaches in the contemporary art scene and regularly presenting the works of young artists. Since 2000, for example, one of the accents has been on the most recent trends in painting. Florian Süssmayr's inventories of urban realities and the painterly narrations of Janis Avotins and Wilhelm Sasnal operate between reality and fiction, between the picture plane and the illusion of spatiality, and thematicize – while correlating with our own imagination's fund of images – the very principles of pictorial narrative.

"I always find those artists interesting who pass on an awareness of history, engage in a kind of self-reflection and also maintain a certain aloofness to existing power structures."
(R. Schöttle)

2001 saw the publication of "Bild – Erzählung – Öffentlichkeit. Die Galerie Schöttle", a book that examines the notions of image and narration in art since the 1960s against the background of the gallery's own history and also the presentation and representation of art in the context of the relationship between art and the public. Two chapters are also devoted to Rüdiger Schöttle's art projects "Louis XIV dances" and "Theatergarden Bestiarium". Contributions by: Marius Babias, Ulrich Bischoff, James Coleman, Catherine David, Heinz Gappmayr, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Boris Groys, Julian Heynen, Jörg Johnen, Rainer Metzger, Brygida Ochaim, Stefan Römer, Anri Sala, Rüdiger Schöttle, Thomas Schütte, Heinz Schütz (ed.), Dirk Snauwaert, Guy Tortosa, Jeff Wall
(ISBN 3-85165-504-4; 167 pages, in German)