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