Baustelle 1, Hamburg, November 2017

Berlin based artist Jörg Hasheider has been working with pressed flowers for many years. After he explored their symbolic values in collages and material paintings, he recently switched his focus towards the immanent qualities of the flowers — shape, colour, transparency —.
For “Baustelle eins”, Hasheider created “Organic Contamination”, a wall piece constituted of 64 A4 sheets of tracing paper and 20 floral blotches. In this work he explores the tension between conceptual shaping and organic growth. To achieve this, he scrutinizes two aspects of the process of contamination. Initially, the concept to contaminate a geometric, standardised raster with floral blotches directs our attention to the differences between industrial and organic shapes and patterns.

On another level one can witness the process of the “making” of the blotches from grown organic matter — always unique flowers. This takes place in a modulating process of ongoing mutual influence between the artist and the flowers: The “maker” is contaminated by his material. This interaction alters the classical understanding of “making” — shape dominates material — towards a “making“ that intertwines shape and material in a common flow of energy.

Baustelle eins (Building Site one), whose name refers to ongoing, uncompleted processes, integrates the organic contamination in its concept. The tracing paper sheets merge with the wall and the floral blotches interact with the surrounding glass, stone and metal.

Installation at Gallery Puccs Contemporary, Budapest
June / July 2017

1 x 1 x 1 m cube, wood, metal chains, 40 flowers                                                      2017

   

Photographies by Alexine Chanel and Bullet

Usambara (Hybrids)

diameter 22,5 cm                                                                                                        2017
Showroom Axel Nestle, Zwischenraum, Bieberach
Galerie Uli Lang, Bieberach

nightsky/matter 1 – 5

fluctuating 1 + 2    23 x 18 cm                                                                                     2016

Showroom Axel Nestle, Zwischenraum, Bieberach
Galerie Uli Lang, Bieberach
Hochparterre Berlin / KunstSalon

pretty pressure dance

 5 x 23 x 18 cm                                                                                                           2016

Showroom Axel Nestle, Zwischenraum, Bieberach
Hochparterre Berlin / KunstSalon

Exhibition at Neue Sächsische Galerie, Chemnitz , February / April 2017

Exhibition at Galerie Nord / Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin in the frame of the European Month of Photography, October / November 2016

“one hour at the beach”, 8 photographies 75 X 50 cm, 2 photographies 180 x 120 cm“privatized”, 8 photographies 75 X 50 cm, 2 photographies 180 x 120 cm“targets”, 8 photographies 75 X 50 cm, 2 photographies 180 x 120 cm 

The exhibition comprises 3 series of 10 photographies that are dealing with social and political phenomena of Israel today. His themes are: the decay of the utopian vision of the first settlers, the way to treat ethnical and religious minorities and the neccessary absurdity of the israelian military. Ilan Nachum is dealing with these intricate, deeply ideologicaly and religiously rooted issues with great intelligence and ease, completely undogmatic and without any pathos. He virtously plays with the possibilties of documentary photography. Always keeping the necessary distance, his deep envolement in – and commitment to the photographed subject, life in israel, its problems, absurdities and beauty, is strongly perceptible.

Privatized

„… Kibbutz is an experiment that did not fail.“ Martin Buber In 2009 the Kibbutz movement celebrated its 100th anniversary. The long lasting and influentual utopian, socialist experiment started with the foundation of the first Kibbutz, Degania, in 1909. Over time it evolved and underwent changes, but its primary idea, the equality of all members, remaind, more or less, untouched. „From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.“ In the 1980s, with the privatization of the kibbutzim – different levels of income and private ownership – this primary quality begins to vanish. The loosening of the communal bonds in the Kibbutzim seems to go hand in hand with a change in the collective thinking of the Israeli society. In 2009 Ilan Nachum started a series of photographs, that, at first glance, document the typical housing of Kibbutzim. Underlyning the documentary appeal of the photographs is his use of similar angles and light situations, following the idea of the well-known german photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher: to define a type by the slight differences that become obvious when the objects are isolated and than aggregated in a sequence. Looking at the differences between the work of the Bechers and Ilan Nachum we find the core of his work „privatized.“ The Bechers document landmarks of a declining industry – connected with specific forms of technology and societies – that were often dismantled soon after they were photographed. Due to these circumstances the photographic representations become monuments of the photographed objects. Referent and sign fall in one. Ilan Nachum´s work is transcendent in a different way. His objects will remain. He is documenting a declining idea. He turns the usual iconography of the representation of life in a kibbutz – groups of children playing together, groups of people working together- upside down. The dwellings he photographs seem to be abandoned. The inhabitants that appear in a few of the pictures seem isolated and ghostlike in the bright light. In a strange but factual way the dwellings change their meaning from being representations and symbols of an egalitarian utopia to images of a classical suburban lifestyle.

One hour at the beach

This sequence shows the most crucial point of israeli social life: the coexistence of diffrent religious groups. The beach is a surrounding, where the social interactions of groups and individuals can be perfectly surveyed. It offers an almost neutral and empty space, in which the choice, where to settle yourself is determined by the relation towards others. The groups represented in the photogaphs are secular israelis and arabic muslims, easily identified by their divergent dress codes. Even when together, it is obvious, that there is no interaction between them. The art of Ilan Nachum shows people in an overwhelming and elementary set-up of beach, ocean and sunset. The chosen time – the sun has set and darkness sets in – is augmenting the existential expression of the work. The sheer beauty and intensity of the scenery integrates the various attitudes and shows people as they are: human beings enjoying and understanding life in respect to the elements of nature. Ideas of social or religious segregation seem vain.

Targets

This series is the most recent work of Ilan Nachum and it still is a work in progress. He has access to a restricted army district inside the Negev Desert, where he found constellations, that at first sight are reminiscent of landart pieces : strange constructions mounted on top of artifical hills, weird objects and circular arrangements. Placed within the wide and empty desert landscape they create a surrealistic impression, similar to the paintings of Dali or Tanguy. Looking closer at the objects an additional aspect comes into play: the objects are composed of scrap – military residue as well as refrigirators, metal bedframes, car parts, old barrels, etc. The objects are used as targets for the Israeli Air Force. They, in an almost touching way, are mimicking radar stations or rocket launches. The camera, as a documenting tool, is preserving a utilitarian fake, a manipulated reality. Layers of „The Real“ and the imaginary melt under the relentless desert sky.

The exhibition was supported by:       

Links:
Ilan Nachum
Neue Sächsische Galerie
Galerie Nord / Kunstverein Tiergarten

Video filmed at the opening,

29th of July, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin

Silvia Beck, Laurence Egloff, Marco Goldenstein, Elke Graalfs, Anett Lau, Peter Nansen Scherfig, Veronika Schumacher, Wolf von Waldow, Dana Widawski

The ornament is back, back as wallpapers in fancy lofts, as filigree blinds in architecture and also back in the discourse of contemporary art. In the current art-production, two relations are particularly obvious: 1. Working with ornaments in their baroque function as space structuring elements relating architecture and art/design. 2.The deconstruction of ornamental structures that are looked upon as symbolic for opressive systems. In-between these formal and contentual, associative reference points – and beyond – there are  almost endless possibilities to access „The Ornament“ and its long history. For thousands of years, ornaments were defining the appearence and the spiritual message of buildings and objects of everyday and ritual use. They integrated the progress of philosophical, religious and geometrical-mathematical thinking into more and more complex structures and gave them visual presence. The formal means of rhythmics and recursion – used since the Stone Age – establish a connection of being human – pulse, birth, death – and cosmic processes. In the 20th century, the concept of structuring surfaces and intertwining them with ordinal systems finds a new surface in the observation of  corporative production and organisation.The ornament is less regarded as communicating stability and knowledge, but as a form incorporating force and power. Nowadays the ordinal system „Ornament“, formally and motivicly fractionalized, becomes the stage for the clash of systemic and individualistic thinking. Adopting the transcending concept of the ornament, while simultaneously transforming it subjectively, contemporary artists reestablish the ornament as an unconcerned, descretionary media. A media that makes it possible to connect images and tokens in new ways and structure walls and spaces. Silvia Beck, Veronika Schumacher, Wolf von Waldow Dana Widawski, Elke Graalfs, Marco Goldenstein Peter Nansen Scherfig, Dana Widawski

Silvia Beck

Dicionário de Dúvida, 2015 HD-video / screen, 02.32‘ Edition 1 + 3 by courtesy of Hafemann Internatiional

Laurence Egloff

Nr. 1, 2000, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 240 cm, Nr. 2 Perlmutt, 2000, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 150 cm

»Gekreuch«, 2014, Collage on wallpaper, 150 cm x 140cm

 Anett Lau

constructio, 2016, stencil print on wallpaper, Installation, 3 x 3 m

Völkerkunde, 2008, Giclé, refugee camp, 2010, digital print

       Geh doch, 2016, tile-painting, 31,5 x 318,5 cm, Marco Goldenstein on the right

Self Made, Putin mit seinem Beichtvater, Kill Animals, Diebische Elster,

Altes Spital, Arnstadt, October 2015

Some impressions of the second “Identities” exhibition. It comprised the same artists as the earlier show at “Pavillon am Milchhof”, but it showcased additional works of Alexine Chanel, Viola Kamp and myself. For further informations, please scroll down and have a look at the exhibition at Milchhof, April 2015. A documentation of Alexine Chanels new work you find here: the calling

Photographies by Alexine Chanel Thanks to Christian, Andreas, Albrecht, Konstanze, Constance, Holger and all the voluntary helpers. The exhibition was supported by: Ilm-Kreis and 

Studio Haus am Lützowplatz June, July, August 2015

Ruprecht Dreher, Peter Freitag, Nicholas Kashian, HC Petersen, Oliver Ross, Marco P Schäfer

The exhibition „Paper Icons“ convenes six artists working within the material of paper under the theme „The Icon“.
 Within the pieces in this exhibition, there are two distinct approaches : Firstly, the re-combination or subsequent eradication of iconic signifiers using found materials. Secondly, the construction of signs with an iconic appeal using blank material. Both approaches work with the deconstruction of the icon as a common signifier and the disengagement from its use as a guided association.
 A disengagement that gives the recipient a heightened awareness of the allover iconic imprint of our society of the „Iconic Turn“ by opening up new spaces of association. (Introduction see below)

Ruprecht Dreher, Peter Freitag

Oliver Ross, Marco P Schäfer

H C Petersen

Nicholas Kashian

INTRODUCTION Dark Matter, the known unknown. An encompassing, unknown structure in which the known is sporadically flashing like peripheraly-filed engrams. Dark Matter constitutes 84.5 % of the materia of the univers and it eludes our perception. The visible materia that is fundamental for our perception is formed by hypothetic forces. With the iconisation of public space by „architectural icons“ and advertisments, the meaning and form building forces of social functions and social discourse fade into the background. An orientation towards form and a turning away from shaping shows up. The outstanding is not outstanding in its function anymore, but in its form–its symbolism.The world that occurs is imprinted by marketing and capital interests. It should be mentioned that art is part of semiocapitalistic industries. Signature pieces in signature rooms are standards in art marketing. The exhibiting artists use products of semiocapitalism as basic material for their deconstructions. Magazinpages, advertisements, porn, posters, quickly consumed iconic content on ephemeral material. The artists erase, cut out, recombine and displace both formally and contentwise. Porn without sex, adds without products, polaroids without photos. Icons become patterns and patterns become icons. The signature piece steps back behind the method of making the not seen, the ephemeral and accidental visible. Structures and patterns behind the icons, the message, emerge and open spaces of perception and free association.

Thanks to Galerie Kuhn & Partner for support!

Pavillon am Milchhof, April 2016

The exhibition showcases the works of Awst & Walther, Alexine Chanel,
Jörg Hasheider, Viola Kamp and Daphna Reves. Media are (video)installation, painting and photography.
The mutual aspect of the works is their occupation with the perception of individuals and the change of individual perception in a surrounding that is determined by digital data flows – a discursive and poetic self-assertion of uniqueness in the days of
data-mining and self-optimization.

introduction

With  the still rapidly growing possibility of capturing and analysing huge amounts of data and the growing availability of data from on-line trading and on-line
communication, the providers of services and producers of goods obtain insight into the individual behaviour of consumers. These consumers are subsumed into relevant or
non-relevant groups and recieve specially created or modified offers.
Aside from commercial aspects, the surveilance of citizens by state-run agencies was
largely discussed in the context of the information revealed by Edward Snowden.

Questions occuring in this context are:

— what remains of our ideas of individual freedom and uniqueness being subjected to
those processes?
— what is the methodology behind the subsumption of individuals in groups of specified
consumers or suspects and how is it influencing our lifes?
— are the binary codes, that push these processes, the base of a standardized and
codified perception of „world“?

In this discursive context the artists present works, that:

— grasp individual aspects and keep them autonomous,
— show the complexity of everyday life inter-actions,
— confront the uniqueness of individuals with their standardization and codification.

All rights by the artists, except “Biometric Painting” by Awst & Walter and PSM Galerie.
Photographies of the exhibition by Alexine Chanel

Thanks to Markus, Heike, Hartmut and Frank Benno!

Supported by: Kunsthochschule Weißensee, Milchhof e. V. and PSM Galerie.

real running time of “drone age voodoo”: 58 min

ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPOSSIBLE LOVE

sound/wall installation

cans, acrylic, piezos, mp3-players, amps

I think the intention of the piece is described with the title. Formally the installation is based on the complementary colors blue and orange and the interfering sounds of 2 tibetan sound bowls. The interferences unite the colors and sounds on a kind of meta-level, creating a playful vision of coming together.
The lower „couples“ sound simultaneously, the upper one echoes a bit later.

sound/wall installation
can, acrylic, piezo, amp, mp3-player The work is inspired by an incident that happened in Cartagena, Columbia, quite a long time ago. Two „police officers“ grabed me on the street and pushed me into a cell. It was pitch-black and contained absolutely nothing – not even a basket to pee in -. The intention of the „officers“ was to scare me shitless and then get some money. Besides me, there was an other, columbian, guy in this jail – obviously for a longer time -, who needed to talk. What he said is, more or less, the text of the poor creature, that is captured in the can. I saw the sunlight again the next day – they liked my fancy german pocket-knife -. The piece is dedicated to all people who are locked-up in dark cells.

play on minimum volume

Altes Spital, Arnstadt    Installation, March – September 2014 My second work for the ancient hospital „Spittel“ in Arnstadt, „15 X Bach“, is contrasting 15 professionally crafted copies of the Bach portrait painted by the Leipzig court painter Elias Gottlieb Hausmann in 1746 with 15 interpretations of the Well Tempered Piano. The interpretations are played on cd-players with headphones that are wall-mounted besides the portraits. With the installation we are deconstructing the label Bach, by splitting two main constituents of his perceptual image into aspects. One impuls to do so is given by Bach himself: On the porträt he is holding a sheet of paper showing the notation of a „Riddle Canon“. The canon consists of two given voices. The missing third voice has to be found by a partner, in this case the spectator of the portrait. Bach is inviting us to play a game with him! We follow his invitation and create an image of Bach as a potentiality. We send his portrait all the way to China and have it copied. We get the results and have fun with the divergencies. We confront the results with 15 international interpretations of the Well Tempered Piano. We connect the efforts for an objective, precise reproduction with the efforts for a subjective and personal approximation. We see and hear global exchange and endless variety. We percieve the diffrence of image and reflection, of notation and interpretation. Selection of copies made by: Amazon oil painting Co.,Ltd. Xiamen,Fujian,China Interpretations of the Well Tempered Piano, Book 1 by: Daniel Barenboim, Richard Egarr, Till Fellner, Walter Gieseking, Kenneth Gilbert, Friedrich Gulda, Angela Hewitt, Keith Jarrett, Robert Levin, Maurizio Pollini, Sviatoslav Richter, Andràs Schiff, Martin Stadtfeld, Rosalyn Tureck, Glen Wilson

IMAGES OF THE INSTALLATION

Video filmed and edited by Ronit Tayar: http://www.ronittayar.com/

Copyright of the Bach portrait: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig

The project is run by: Kuratorium zur Wahrnehmung der Interessen des St. Georg und St. Jakobs Stift e.V.

Sponsors:

  Ilm-Kreis

Partners:

Many thanks to Christian and Constanze, Andreas, Pia, Beate, Volker, Albrecht, Konstanze, Holger and all friends in Arnstadt!

WITZENHAUSEN 2013

Aboudramane, Liz Crossley, Clemence De La Tour Du Pin, Goddy Leye,
Myriam Mihindou, Antoine Renard, Rosmarie Weinlich
in cooperation with Galerie Peter Herrmann

Plants Talk, Africa was the second exhibition I was organising for the facilities of the DITSL GmbH, the german institute for tropical and subtropical agriculture, and the tropical greenhouses of the University of Kassel. Both exhibitions were working with the fascinating opportunity to connect the Ethnographical Museum and the greenhouses in the framework of exhibitions that were dealing with the relations man – plant, societies – resources.

THE GREENHOUSES

Celemence de La Tour du Pin, Antoine Renard

The common interest of the young french artist couple Clemence de La Tour du Pin and Antoine Renard, is the impact of production, consumption and marketing – and their random side-effects and interactions – on our genetic and memetic evolution.
„Premium Products for a better life“ is using the greenhouse as a screen for aggressive, highly manipulative advertisements of the food industries.
The work is operating on two levels:
Concerning the content, the six banners show combinations and work-overs of food packages, that were chosen with a special focus on fake, the difference between presentation and content. The advertising surfaces are additionally blurred, turned upside down and enriched by additional, apocryphal informations. Some of the packages are opened and squeezed out to reveal the texture and the color of the content. Just partially understandable informations emerge from irritating surfaces, whos aesthetics show, how the relation Man – Food – Nature is transformed and defined.
Formally the banners correspond to the vegetal environment – in terms of color, contentwise-. This connections stay vage and are not stringent. The predominance of the digital marketing-strategies over the Analogue, the Real is the prevailing impression.

Rosmarie Weinlich

Habitat
A melancholic memento of transience
Mixed-media-installation (lightbulbs, carnivorous plants, substratum)

Assuming that our universe is a closed system, all life will someday expire. My experiment: the biological conditions for the developement of life are given. A plant is placed in a substratum, supplied with light and then hermetically sealed. When one of my habitats is ready, time is taking over the rest of the artistic work. RW
The work was also part of the “The Beauty of Trancience” show, May 2013. You find more pictures and , if you like your pictures moved, a video there. Please scroll down.

THE ETHNOGAPHICAL MUSEUM

 Liz Crossley

This was a City 2002. Acryl auf Leinwand  200 x 170 cm
Grass shall grow 2002. Acryl auf Leinwand  200 x 170 cm

Liz Crossley was born in Kimberley, South Africa. She lives in Berlin. Basic for her work is the landscape around Kimberley, where she grew up. A landscape, still inhabited by residual members of the indigenious population, the San, that developed in aeons and was profoundly changed in years. A landscape that was devastated by extinction and exploitation, that was shaped by the fight for survival and greed in its most elementary form. In the course of the big diamond rush in 1869, each square meter of ground was literally turned over. The face of that landscape, from the stoneage engravings of the San to its scattered presence, is object of her art.
„Landscape are the most solid appearance in which a history can declare itself. It is not background, nor is it a stage – there it is, the past in the present, constantly changing and renewing itself as the present rewrites the past“. LC

Aboudramane

Petite femme     

Puppet, Raphia, Horn, Cowries, Metall 
1997. 170 x 35 cm
Femme éphémère    Wood, Steel, Raphia, Head of a Puppet. 
1996. 129 x 30 cm.

Myriam Mihindou

WARDA    Video 1:14 min Loop

Aware of being part of at least two cultures, she is working on an universal iconography. Mainly working as a sculpurer, she is integrating all kinds of contemporary and traditional aspects. She looks upon her numerous photografies and videos as being part of an organic sculpure. Her self-referential images are dealing with the female body and its stagings. Forcefully strangulated hands and feet refer to the physical threat, these bodies are constantly exposed to. The vunerability of the self and the search for identity are the constituent parts of her work, that also includes her fight for women´s rights in africa and worldwide.

Warda Al-Jazairia (22 July 1939 – 17 May 2012) was an Algerian-Lebanese singer who was well known for her pan-Arabist songs and music. Her name literally meant Warda the Algerian, but she was commonly referred to as just Warda or as “The Algerian Rose” in the Western media.

The Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice), formerly known as the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) is an African organization located in Cotonou, Benin. AfricaRice is an agricultural research center that was constituted in 1971 by 11 West African countries. Presently the center counts 24 African member states. AfricaRice is since 1986 one of the 15 specialized research centers – the “Future Harvest Centers” – of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Goddy Leye

WE ARE THE WORLD      Video, 4:56 min, Loop
short demo-version

Goddy Leye was born 1965 in cameroon. He died in 2011. His main artistic endeavors were dedicated to the establishment of an african conciousness, that is not entangled in colonial or post-colonial thinking. His video „We are the world“ is an incredibly witty and intellectually precise ironic replica to the hit performed by the United Support Artists for Africa.
„The hit „We are the world“ was released, when I was still going to school, dreaming of a better world. I was angry about the fact, that african artists, who were mainly struck by it, never dealt with it. So, as the possibilty occured, I forgot that I should better not become the singer in a band and sang „We are the world“.The work was primarily shown in Douala, on a big screen facing a mall with banks and shops…..A group of young people gathered in front of it and was singing with me: We are the world.“GL

Aboudramane, Liz Crossley, Myriam Mihindou, Goddy Leye
by courtesy of Galerie Peter Herrmann
Photocredits: Galerie Peter Herrmann, Clemence de la Tour du Pints
Sponsors:
 
Partners:
 

Studio-Exhibition
Ruprecht Dreher, Peter Freitag, HC Petersen, Marco P. Schaefer

November – December 2013

The exhibition „Paper Icons“ convenes four artists working within the material of paper under the theme „The Icon“.
Within the pieces in this exhibition, there are two distinct approaches :
Firstly, the re-combination or subsequent eradication of iconic signifiers using found materials.
Secondly, the construction of signs with an iconic appeal using blank material.Both approaches work with the deconstruction of the icon as a common signifier and the disengagement from its use as a guided association.
A disengagement that gives the recipient a heightened awareness of the allover iconic imprint of our society of the „Iconic Turn“ by opening up new spaces of association.

Blattformer (Ruprecht Dreher, Peter Freitag)

Ruprecht Dreher

Peter Freitag

BLATTFORMER PROJECT
For one entire year (October 26th, 2009 until October 25th, 2010) the two artists Peter Freitag and Ruprecht Dreher took turn to produce one paper-cut every day and published it in the blogwww.blattformer.de.
Form and content were open – development welcome. The only common parameter was to start from apaper sheet with appr. the same size (Din A5-format) and the agreement to alternate daily.

RUPRECHT DREHER
Ruprecht Dreher(*1951 in Gruenstadt/ Pfalz) studied with Joseph Beuys at the Academy of Duesseldorf from 1971 to 1978. He has been living and working in Berlin since 1978. His work has been shown in Duesseldorf.Cologne, Berlin, Leipzig, Milan, Budapest, Paris, San Fransisco, Chicago, Basel, Venice, among other locations. His main artistic endeavors are dedicated to abstract painting, where color and materiality play a central role. He examines how paint interact with ground, form, and body, as a physical power with object-like qualities. His work is based on a dialogic/ dialictic way of making: opposites, contradictions that are selfprovoking: in front of/ behind, old/ new, positve/ negative, brilliant/dull. The surface turns into a topography. His work has been described as a pictorially abstract, but at the sametime a materially concrete, narration.

Peter Freitag

Peter Freitag (*1972) is a digital-analog image-manipulator. In his work he manipulates the pleasantappearance of media images by perforating their promising surfaces and supplying them with open levelsof meaning.His intervetions interrupt the advertisments linear rules of operation and open new spaces for associations.

HC Petersen

Originally from Berlin, Germany, Hans Christian Petersen moved to Australia in 1998 and gained permanent residency status in 2000. Christian is a practising artist, specialising in photography, writing and conceptual art. Over the past twenty years he has exhibited and given readings in Germany, Austria, Portugal, Poland and the U.S.A.

Marco P. Schaefer

Marco P. Schaefer (1967 / Traunstein) studied at the HfbK Hamburg. He lives and works in Berlin since 2009. He is a drawing and cutting virtuoso who is dealing with pumped up visual worlds, informational overflow and hippness, which he ingeniously transforms into contemporary, conceptual entities.

Altes Spital Arnstadt, June – July 2013

scroll down for a video-walk

For a long time, the curatorium of the St. Jakobs-Stift e.V. has been working for the preservation of the historical infirmary in Arnstadts old town. As we now can start substantial physical safeguarding measures, we would like to open the fascinating building for the public and present its possibilities as a venue for cultural events. The frame for this first opening is given by the exhibition “The Beauty of Transience” curated by Jörg Hasheider. The exhibition presents internationally respected artists, who are working with the course of time, decay and the aesthetics of those processes. The media are space installations, sound installations, objects and video.

Manon Awst & Benjamin Walther, Alexine Chanel, Marco Goldenstein,
Frank Benno Junghanns, Karina Mosegard, Charlotte Seidel, Hubert Steins,
Rosmarie Weinlich 

Awst & Walther
Das süße Leben (sweet life)
Installation (grapes, neon, metall construction)

In this collaboration, the artists Manon Awst and Benjamin Walther, create an ephemeral sculpure. The sculpture, a chandelier made of grapes with a luxiurous, baroque appeal, decays with the grapes in a simultanious, performative process. The appropriation of the luxiurous finery is limited to a short space of time – especially compared to extremely longlasting classical sculptures made of bronze or marble -. A symbol of european, aristocratic culture decays in an organic process. In this same process the grapes are producing concentrated fructose – to sweeten life -.

Alexine Chanel
Self-Portrait in Decomposition
Installation (vase, flowers, mirrorshards)

„Self-Portrait in Decomposition“ is a living/dying work in reference to the french for still life: nature morte, this would be a nature mourante (roughly translates as life being stilled) This floral composition in decomposition is about the passage of time, the journey from life to death and the evolution of beauty. AC

Marco Goldenstein
o. t. (Deckel 1 – 4) (bookcases 1 – 4)
1. „Unruhe um Katinka“ 2. „Weiter als die Erde reicht“
3. „Lisa und die roten Nelken“ 4. „Die köstlichen Tage“

„….I remember a time, when the earth was so close, that i did not hurt myself when I tumbled. The stones were good to me. The trees were protecting me. Only ants scared me. „Go to the anthill and learn…..“
Slowly I learnt to get hurt and scared.
Gunnar Ekelöft

Frank Benno Junghanns
gone I (25 empty frames)
gone II (skull)
gone III (hole, outdated electronics, light/sound)

Frank Benno Junghanns created site-specific installations for the exhibition. In the staircase and the first hallway he placed a sequence of empty frames on the walls. Resembling a gallery of absent ancestors, the frames frame nothing but the structure of the walls, so underlining the function of the building as an influential part of the exhibition and its perception.
In an other hallway, that was closed for safety reasons, he placed the a bovine  skull in a light spot on the ground. Evoking emblematic associations of death and desert he transformed the no-go-area into a picture of a house with a great potential as a fallow land.
The building contains a collection of GDR products. FBJ used electronic devices from the collection to install a sound-and lightinstallation in a hole in the floor and the room below, creating a reminiscence of a culture that very quickly disappeared and now lives on in a kind of mental underground.

Karina Mosegård
Nature Morte
Gobelins transparentes
Mixed-media-installation (cotton, synthetics, embroidery, drawing)

Karina Mosegård reinterprets the arthistorical genre „Nature Morte“. Still life – in french „Nature Morte (dead nature) – is a style in photografy and painting working with the compostition of inanimated objects. Karina Mosegard technically enhances the concept by embroidering the objects on transparent cloth and place one behind the other. The drawings are floating in space, slightly distorted, almost uncapable, in a process of decomposition. Opposing this, the different layers merge into a new image, new images, and so generate a process of becoming.

Charlotte Seidel
Illusions sur cour
Video, 4:3, 14`49“(loop)

The cloudlike foam is slowly floating along the skyblue tiles.  A banal detail converts into a distraction of everyday life, into a world of dreams and illusion. CS

Hubert Steins

Schattenland (shadowland)
Cycle of Images / Wax-cast 47 X 47 cm

Schattenland is a programmatic cycle of images that deals wit the phenomenon of the apparitional  and decaying. Artist-potraits, for example of Samuel Beckett, Morton Feldman and John Cage, but also of young artist from my circle of friends, appear as a reference to an art that exists at the verge of silence and the visible. Schattenland examines the borders of perceptibillity by the material that is used. All portraits are integrated in the backside of a board of wax as a casted relief. The translucent quality is changing the conciseness of the incrusted portraits depending on the light. (HS)

GlockenKlangGlocken (BellsSoundBells)
Soundinstallation for two sonic pendulums and the sound of historical bells

The installation consists of two speakers that are integrated in two bowls that are covered up by lids. Recordings of historical bells, most of them destroyed during World War II, sound from the speakers under the lids. …. Moving the parabolic lids create a momentum similar to the one of swinging bells. At the same time the movement of the lids influences the given sound by periodically filtering and reflected it, creating the impression of listening to church bells far away.

Rosmarie Weinlich
Habitat
A melancholic memento of transience
Mixed-media-installation (lightbulbs, carnivorous plants, substratum)

Assuming that our universe is a closed system, all life will someday expire. My experiment: the biological conditions for the developement of life are given. A plant is placed in a substratum, supplied with light and then hermetically sealed. When one of my habitats is ready, time is taking over the rest of the artistic work. RW

VIDEO-DOCUMENTATION

The exhibition was organized and supported by:

KURATORIUM DES VEREINIGTEN ST. GEORGS- UND ST. JAKOBS-STIFTS E.V.

Main sponsor                          Support                                        Print

Many thanks to Christian and Constanze, Andreas, Pia, Knut, Rainer, Konstanze, Holger and all friends in Arnstadt!

Photocredits: Marco Goldenstein,Karina Mosegård, Kai Mosegård Jensen, Axel Nestle,
FB Junghanns, Hubert Steins

Object, birdsnest, acrylic glass box, pedestal, colored pencil
14 X 14 X 6.5 cm, pedestal 130 cm,  2012

Last spring I could watch two blue-tits bringing up their biddies in a birdshome that I fixed close to one of my windows. What an amazing efford! When I later removed the nest, I was surprised, that it was all made of organic material, mainly moss – right in the center of Berlin -. The second sensation was its incredible softness.
Preserving and presenting it in a sealed acrylic glass display, excludes us forever from the tactile sensation, that is now humbly replaced by the description on the pedestal – so soft and cosy -. A work about preservation and representation taking away the main quality of the preserved and presented object and a memorial for the tiny birds and their devotion to life. – I hope they give me the honour again next spring –

prints on brillant supreme lustre 80 X 120 cm, framed 2008

The series of photografies is the last result of a long lasting involvement in conceptual photografy. As I considered the analog and chemical processes, causing a calculable but still evident loss of control, as basical for my photografic work, I was not happy with the nececcity to digitalize and postproduce the slides. The photografies presented here show extremely small settings. I used a pentax 50mm macro with very long exposure. They follow the ideas of Moholy-Nagy in so far, as the light – as an energy you can guide but not control even within a set frame – is creating the image.

Located at the edge of a forest 2007
The work and it´s title refer to the landscapist Claude Lorrain (1666 – 1682). Lorrain worked with a mirror made from polished black glas to find and define his motifs. So the picture was not taken from nature, but from a shaped representation of nature. During the age of enlightning the now called „Claude-Mirror“ became fashionable among european aristocrats. With pocket-sized mirrors they where searching for „picturesque“ motifs. Not the experience of nature, but its´s selective perception was the focus of interest.
The installation is made of 3 mirrors from polished stainless steel. There formats are 30 X 45 cm, 25 X 50 cm and 20 X 60 cm. They are placed at the verge of a forest, looking at a panoramic view. The recipient moves at the interface of nature and image. He can choose his angle of view – select his motif -, but he will also experience the limitations set by the defind cut-outs.