Picture: Nándor Angstenberger

February 7 – April 12, 2023

Nándor Angstenberger

World Builder

“When someone asks me what I do as a visual artist, I answer: I am a world builder!
But I am also a collector, a folder, a tailor or a searcher, a finder and an archivist.
My organically growing constructions are neither models for something nor models of something. They are life designs, proposals and suggestions for new ideas and spatial concepts, but also designs for unrealizable constructions from a parallel world that we only know from literature or mythology.
The materials I use for my works are mostly found objects, forgotten, left behind or lost. They have patina, they have traces of life in the form of scratches, discoloration or deformation, and it is these traces of life that make the material interesting for me. They are usually very small, but can also be larger, inconspicuous, readily overlooked, but in their composition they reveal the magic of things. They can also be found objects from nature, fallen branches, worked by seasons and weather, or flotsam, reinterpreted by the forces of water. I would like to invite the viewer to rediscover the small things of everyday life, learning to appreciate the beauty of the inconspicuous and easily overlooked. It is an aesthetic of the imperfect, characterized by asymmetry, roughness, irregularity, simplicity and economy, showing respect for the peculiarity of things.
I collect these materials tirelessly, without being tied to a place or fixated on a material. Part of my research is to explore a new place, my future archive of materials and ideas, collecting and sorting first impressions.
A big theme in my work right now is my concentric utopian and fantastical landscapes or worldviews. They are very autobiographical, a status quo, an event, a reflection on systems, how to live, how to live and how not to live. What’s happening around us, being part of this society, being an artist, being human. A lot of the material I use I take from nature, but I also give some back to the cycle of nature when I take down the installations. It is also a search for traces that I embark on, the collection of working material, experiences and adventures.
My filigree objects are created without sketches or concrete preliminary work. They are guided by my own imagination. Personal notes and experiences find their way into my objects without the usual evaluative order. Despite their often fairy-tale appearance, my works are also commentaries on the crisis of the private sphere and the loss of stable identities. In a globalized world, certainties have finally dissolved, absolutely everything has become material.” (Nándor Angstenberger, 2022)

Nándor Angstenberger wants to invite the viewer to rediscover the small things of everyday life and thus learn to appreciate the beauty of the inconspicuous and easily overlooked. His materials are mostly found objects: Forgotten, abandoned and lost, or found objects from nature. They have patina, they have scratches, discolorations, are deformed. These traces of life are what make the material interesting to him, and it is in their composition that he unlocks the magic of these things. It is an aesthetic of the imperfect, which is characterized by asymmetry, roughness, irregularity, simplicity and economy, thus demonstrating respect for the peculiarity of things. Angstenberger studied fine arts at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg and describes himself as a world builder and material archivist. His works have been shown at the Museum Marta Herford, Ludwig Museum Koblenz, Kunsthalle Krems, Kunstmuseum Ahrenshoop, Kunsthalle Emden and Museum Kloster Unser Lieben in Magdeburg, Landesmuseum Stuttgart, Kunstverein Freiburg, Kunstverein Bellevue-Saal Wiesbaden and Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, among others. In addition, stage design installations for New Music in the Paris Philharmonic and for OperaLab in the Ackerstadtpalast, Berlin.

Picture: Uwe Jonas, 250 Jahre Humboldt, Humboldt-Forum, September 2019

ALLES IV

The exhibition ALLES IV opens on 21 June 2022 at 7 p.m. and provides an insight into the work of the visual arts with works ranging from photography to oil painting, as well as sculptures and videos, until 24 August 2022.

It is always a concern of the studio im HOCHHAUS to show the current trends in the visual arts in order to offer the residents of Neu-Hohenschönhausen the opportunity to gain an insight into current art production away from the hotspots of the art scene.

The studio in the HOCHHAUS fills its rooms to the rafters with ALLES the participating artists have to offer, representing a range of creativity that enables every visitor to become aware of works that he or she likes. The exhibition also demands time and calmness from the visitors to wander through the rooms, to stroll, and thus to be able to discover something new again and again.

With: Sonja Alhäuser – Michelle Alperin & Joe Neave – Elisabeth Ajtay – Nándor Angstenberger – Martin Assig – bankleer – Heike Kati Barath – Claudia Barcheri – Horst Bartnig – Jürgen Baumann – Michael Bause – Kai-Annett Becker – Matthias Beckmann – Nora Below – Benjamin Berkow – Holger Biermann – Boisseau & Westermeyer – Manuel Bonik – Patrick Borchers – Gunnar Borbe – Kai Bornhöft – Nick Bötticher – David Braithwaite – Thomas Bruns – Ingmar Bruhn – Astrid Busch – Dirk Busch – Alexander Callsen/Boris Jöns – Salomé Chkheidze-Mohs – Herbert De Colle – Marula di Como – Chris Costan – Swen Daemen – Henrike Daum – Ole Debovary – Dellbrügge & de Moll – Helmut Dick – Andreas Drewer – Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout – Manfred Eichhorn – Jürgen Eisenacher – Dana Engfer – Carola Ernst – Sabine Fassl – Christel Fetzer – Frederik Foert – Franziska Frey – Sabine Friesicke – Catherine Gerberon – Ingo Gerken – Katrin Glanz – Christian Grosskopf – Thorsten Goldberg – Carola Göllner – Kerstin Gottschalk – Reinhold Gottwald – Massoud Graf–Hachempour – Kim Dotty Hachmann & Ginny Sykes – Ulrich Hakel – Zandra Harms – Klaus Hartmann – Lisa Haselbek – Michael Hauffen – Tanja Hehn – Tina Isabella Hild – Gerhard Himmer – Annika Hippler – Alekos Hofstetter – Birgit Hölmer – Ralf Homann – Fabian Hub – Irène Hug – Franziska Hünig – Anja Ibsch – Andrea Imwiehe – Verena Issel – Gunilla Jähnichen – Zora Janković – Gabriele Jerke – Uwe Jonas – Jae-Eun Jung – Yuki Jungesblut – Nikos Kalaitzis – Martin Kaltwasser – Mi Jean Kang – Judith Karcheter – Peter Kees – Werner Kernebeck – Annette Kisling – Ulrike & Günther-Jürgen Klein – Andreas Knäbel – Win Knowlton – Andreas Koch – Silke Koch – Susanne Kohler – Eva–Maria Kollischan – Karen Koltermann – Marcel Kopp – Ruppe Koselleck – Andreas Kotulla – Inge Krause – Käthe Kruse – Annette Kuhl – Susanne Kutter – Kim Eun Kyoung – Chantal Labinski – Michael Lapuks – Seraphina Lenz – Pia Linz – Agnes Lörincz – Petra Lottje – Antonia Low – Liz Magno – Enikö Márton – Rei Matsushima – Matthias Mayer – Udo Meinel – Manfred Michl – Hanako Miyamoto – Ulrike Mohr – Mariella Mosler – Leo de Munk – Berit Myrebøe – Christophe Ndabananiye – Silvia Nettekoven – Ursula Neugebauer – Gertrud Neuhaus – Gabriele Obermaier – Lorcan O’Byrne – Mayumi Okabayashi – Juergen O. Olbrich – Jürgen Palmtag – Jürgen Paas – Günther Pedrotti – Roman Pfeffer – Pfelder – Andrea Pichl – Torsten Prothmann – Katja Pudor – Emily Pütter – Maria-Leena Räihälä – Andrea van Reimersdahl – Roland Reiter – Mirja Reuter – Gerda Riechert – Kai Richter – Renèe Ridgway – Matthias Roth – rasso rottenfusser – Robert Rudigier – Andreas Sachsenmaier – Maike Sander – Matthias Schamp – Gisela Schattenburg – Alexandra Schlund – An Seebach – Olivia W. Seiling – Daniel Seiple – Spunk Seipel – Fabian Seiz – Soji Shimizu – Soyoung Shon – Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag – Elisabeth Sonneck – Christina Speer – Petra Spielhagen – Ute Sroka – Anne Staszkiewicz – Alexander Steig – Christian Stock – Stock‘n‘Wolf – Tommy Støckel – Kamil Sobolewski – ststs – Sven Stuckenschmidt – Betty Stürmer – Max Sudhues – Caro Suerkemper – Lorant Szathmary – Gaby Taplick – Anke Teichel – Thea Timm – Peter Torp – Lukas Troberg – Andrea Übelacker – Anne Ullrich – Timm Ulrichs – Anke Völk – Klaus Walter – Christine Weber – Ute Weiss Leder – Markus Willeke – HS Winkler – René Wirths – Andreas Wolf – Gisela Wrede – Simone Zaugg – Barbara Zenner – Maike Zimmermann – Edgar Zippel – Sandra Zuanovic

Responsive Curating

Anjana Kothamachu, Antonia Low, Ina Ettlinger, Hans HS Winkler, Harish V Mallappanavar, Rasso Rottenfußer, Vichar B N, Vineesh Amin

Curatorial Team: Ralf Homann, Uwe Jonas, Suresh Kumar, Surekha

The exhibition Responsive Curating Opens on 5 April 2022 at 7pm and, until 15 June 2022, gives a glimpse of the “results” of the “Responsive Curating” of the Indian/German edition.

Imagine that the exhibition space is something like an end device, for example a mobile phone, and the exhibition consists of a data package that downloads and unpacks itself in the space: depending on the size and context of the exhibition space, the artworks change during their installation. “Responsive Curating” experiments with the “exhibition” as a “universal medium” that can communicate in any place. An experimental arrangement with surprising results, especially in view of the current challenges of a pandemic. In the face of limited cultural life, the artists do not rely on a digitalisation of representation strategies or on repackaging in online formats. “Responsive Curating” at studio im HOCHHAUS relies entirely on the power of visual art in physical space and the direct experience and in-depth engagement of visitors with the individual works. Works that certainly deal with the new challenge of a digital culture, global economy and the associated field of tension between identity and universalism. With a view to ecological issues, neither artist travel nor art transport was necessary for the international exhibition. Instead, the curatorial concept of “Responsive Curating” revisits formal principles of instruction-based art of the 1960s, but follows contemporary requirements: These include, for example, the sketching of instructions with vector sizes or the responsive design of the individual objects in the exhibition space. Based on the artistic instructions, the works are realised again for each exhibition venue and recycled in the local material cycle after the end of the exhibition. The aura of the artwork is deliberately not created. The studio im HOCHHAUS is the third stop of “Responsive Curating” after the Venkatappa Art Gallery in the South Indian mega-metropolis Bengaluru 2019 (Exhibition on Flash Drive) and the Kunstraum München 2020.

On display are works by Anjana Kothamachu (Bengaluru), Antonia Low (Berlin & Stuttgart), Ina Ettlinger (Munich), Hans HS Winkler (Berlin), Harish V Mallappanavar (Haveri), rasso rottenfusser (Riva del Garda and Munich, Vichar B N (Bengaluru) and Vineesh Amin (Bengaluru). The artworks are based on the artists’ digital instructions and were specially produced in Munich for the exhibition. They question, among other things, the change of time through the Corona pandemic, the function of original and copy on the global art market, the role expectations of or wishful projections on artists and the political possibilities of shaping in diversified globalised and postcolonial contexts.

Supported by:

Picture: Peter Herlitze, 1980

Peter Herlitze, one from here

The exhibition with Peter Herlitze opens on 26 January 2022 and provides an insight into the work of an artist from Neu-Hohenschönhausen, precisely “one from here”, until 29 March 2022. On Sunday 30 January there will be a soft opening from 2 to 6 p.m., the artist will be present.

With the exhibition of Peter Herlitze‘s work, the studio im HOCHHAUS is taking a new approach. Not only is an artist being exhibited who lives “around the corner” in Neu-Hohenschönhausen, but he has also only ever pursued his artistic work alongside his profession as a graphic designer.

Nowadays, artists like to talk about their “bread and butter job” that keeps them going. Peter Herlitze, on the other hand, decided early on to continue to pursue his passion for visual art alongside his creative gainful employment. Since the early 1970s, this has resulted in a broad, diverse body of work ranging from relief prints to watercolour, oil and acrylic paintings to woodcarvings. The “bread job” partly influenced this, in which, for example, texts to the pictures played an important role. The studio in the HOCHHAUS exhibits a selection of Peter Herlitze’s work without pursuing a retrospective intention. The aim is to show the breadth of the work and to read it in the context of its creation.

Picture: Pia Linz, Zingster Straße 25, 2020

25 August to 10 November 2021

Matthias Beckmann, Patrick Borchers, Bea Davies, Jorn Ebner, Juliane Laitzsch, Pia Linz, Christoph Peters

aufzeichen

Drawing as documentation

The exhibition “aufzeichnen”, co-curated by Matthias Beckmann, provides an insight into “drawing documentation”.

Using seven artistic positions as examples, the exhibition shows drawing as a contemporary artistic medium of documentation. Approaches, formats and techniques are as diverse as the perspectives of the draughtsmen and women. Some of them will reject the term documentation because it only refers to a part of their work.

Places are meticulously described in extensive series of drawings. The comic lets pictures and texts tell stories. The trace of the pen can trace movements and actions. Black dots in their condensation bring out the beauty of Japanese tea bowls. Drawing is texture and deals with texture. Territories are explored, measured and recorded. With suitable networks of lines, treasures can be lifted from the floods of media images. And it is always true that drawing, like seeing, is an act of interpretation. There is no such thing as unintentional seeing, pure documentation.

Matthias Beckmann

“Matthias Beckmann draws on location. He needs no other model than the situation he is aiming at. He grasps it in his seeing, indeed, it seems as if he exposes the obvious lineature as if in a kind of skeletal solarisation. The X-ray vision necessary for this seems innate. Effortlessly, he penetrates the confusing distractions of the coloured light-darkness, leaving behind a net-like concentrate that forgets nothing important. Details are discernible, front and back, near and far create the space, objects, shadow gaps or the grain of the wood are translated accordingly in the outlines that present themselves. A structural plausibility holds sway, always a little on the edge of ornamental realism. Despite the seemingly automatic transfer work, there is the ability to ignore, to overlook, which again and again provides the leaves with beautiful open spaces, or natural weightings. Only the most necessary things are captured. In any case, these drawings seem to be suspended in white.” (Reinhard Ermen, Matthias Beckmann, Kunstforum International, vol. 231, 2015, title: Zeichnen zur Zeit VII, p. 166)

Matthias Beckmann was born in Arnsberg in 1965 and lives as a draughtsman in Berlin. He studied at the art academies in Düsseldorf and Stuttgart. His strictly linear works are created without photographic aids or preparatory sketches directly in front of the motif. He has also been working on animated films for several years. His artistic work has been supported, among other things, by a working scholarship from the Kunstfonds Bonn, a foreign scholarship from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for Paris, a scholarship from the Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, the Casa Baldi scholarship in Olevano Romano and a working stay in the studio of the state of Upper Austria in the Salzamt Linz. Matthias Beckmann’s works can be found in many graphic collections, e.g. in Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Oberhausen or Wuppertal.

Patrick Borchers

“Borchers’ drawings are images of fragmented experience of reality that can no longer be conveyed in a simple, central-perspective narrative. We stand in front of the picture as if in a Japanese Zen garden and are unable to grasp the totality of the composition, the exact number of stones on the gravel bed, wherever we stand, the overall picture is not complete.” (From: “Baby elephants and dead terrorists – on Patrick Borchers’ image-analytical hieroglyphics of the present.”, Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge, p.3, 2017)

Patrick Borchers was born in 1975, is a draughtsman and video artist. He lives and works in Hagen and Dortmund. After studying art and special education at the University of Dortmund, he attended the class of Timm Ulrichs at the Kunstakademie Münster. His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad, for example in Kyoto and Osaka in 2008, at OK Offenes Kulturhaus OÖ in Linz in 2011, in two exhibitions at Museum Folkwang Essen in 2014, at Dortmunder U – Zentrum für Kunst und Kreativität in 2016 and at Osthaus Museum Hagen in 2019. In addition to his own artistic work, he is an artistic assistant in the graphics department at TU Dortmund University.

Bea Davies

“Drawing on location is my way of diving deep into the ‘here’ and ‘now’, an escape route from our subjective bubble, an access to the reality that surrounds us.

Drawing sequences of images, movements, colours and sounds that have just happened in front of my eyes has an unadorned immediacy that is hard to find in other media.

For my reportage, I combine drawing on location with the sequential storytelling typical of comics, with the aim of bringing readers as close as possible to the situations and events depicted and offering them a personal approach.”

Beatrice Davies, born in Italy in 1990, has lived in Berlin since 2012 and works as a freelance illustrator and comic artist, among others for the homeless newspaper Strassen|feger. Supported by a scholarship, she began her artistic training at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2010. After stays in Colombia and Italy, she moved to Berlin with her husband and child. In 2015, she began studying visual communication at the weissensee kunsthochschule berlin. In 2016, she receives the Comic Invasion Berlin sponsorship award and the Mart Stam scholarship. In 2018 she is accepted by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. Her first graphic novel “Der König der Vagabunden” (The King of the Vagabonds), with which she is among the finalists for the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung Comic Award in 2019, is published by avant-verlag in the same year. In 2020, Jaja-Verlag will publish an anthology of her autobiographical comics under the title “A Child’s Journey”.

Jorn Ebner

“The mental space of drawing consists of layers of matter and time. Transformations (of memory). Drawing in my work is analogue and digital, on paper or as sound. The triptych “08.12.1980” was created in 2014 after I had acoustically traced the places where the Beatles had demonstrably stayed at the beginning of their career in Hamburg in my online sound project “(The Beatles) in Hamburg” (2011/2012) [http://wwwthedeatlesinhamburg.com/]. John Lennon’s death has such a permanently strong reverberation in my life that I wanted to transpose Yoko, John and the Dakota Building, in front of which Lennon was shot, as drawings”.

Jorn Ebner was born in 1966 in Bremerhaven, lives in Berlin. Studies: Masters in English Literature, History and Art History, University of Hamburg (1990-95), BA (Hons) Liberal Arts, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London (1995-98), Corso Superiore di arti visivi – Allan Kaprow, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como (1997), AHRC Research Fellowship, University of Newcastle upon Tyne School of Art (2002-05). Recent projects: Kunst + Kommunikation 2020 project grant, Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst; AiR Niederösterreich 2019, Krems [AT], International solo exhibitions and participations: including Kunstverein Bochum; Laura Mars, Berlin; Museo de arte contemporaneo de Bogota [CO]; Vane, Newcastle upon Tyne [UK]. Publications by the publishing house The Green Box, Berlin.

Juliane Laitzsch

Seen up close

Juliane Laitzsch’s artistic work is motivated by the curiosity to understand things in their becoming and passing. How do things change over time and how do the corresponding images develop in our minds?

Starting from an examination of historical textiles, currently textile fragments from Egypt in late antiquity, she asks about time; about the time that inscribes itself in the material of the textiles and about the time that becomes legible in the medial mediation of the objects, in texts and photographs. The drawings follow her observations, they reproduce documents relating to the objects and they document their own process of creation. Drawing serves Juliane Laitzsch as a medium of approach and slowing down. In doing so, her drawing technique varies from the most precise representation possible to scribbling on a telephone. Her attention is focused on the process of drawing, its momentum, its rhythms, resonances and feedbacks.

Juliane Laitzsch was born in 1964 in Nuremberg, she studied sculpture in Bremen and at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. She has received working scholarships from the Berlin Senate, the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Graduate School of the UdK Berlin and the VW Foundation, among others. In 2019, her works were shown in the exhibition “Original Bauhaus” at the Berlinische Galerie and in 2020 in the exhibition “Seen Up Close” at the Kulturhistorisches Museum Magdeburg. Currently Juliane Laitzsch is realising an artistic dissertation at the Kunstuni Linz, supervised by Thomas Macho, and is a member of the PhD programme “Epistemologies of Aesthetic Practices” in Zurich.

Pia Linz

I usually begin the “site-specific drawing projects” by surveying the site with footsteps. Using the survey numbers, I weave an area plan with freehand pencil lines drawn from a coordinate system I have laid out on the lower and right edges of the paper surface. I now work directly on the spot with a tracing board. Drawing and writing, I situate my observations made over long periods of time from countless pedestrian perspectives in the plan and thus compare them in an overall view.

“In front of us are drawn miniature worlds, parallel realities, begotten by Pia Linz. Here, objective writing is paired with tacit knowledge, the implicit knowledge that is in the hand and is activated in the drawing process. This ambivalence is what is fascinating about the “place-based drawing projects”. They stand on the edge of ontological doubt and shake the foundations of the buildings. For these drawings not only open up a trivial spatial illusion, but also touch the border where the real and the imaginary meet. The laws of surface are outwitted, surface and depth are interchanged. In this drawing, fiction and fantasy meet with scientific research and mathematical precision. The boundaries of being and appearance, of inside and outside, of proximity and distance become blurred. Pia Linz’s drawing is the in-between, she captures it.” Mechthild Haas, (“Pia Linz”, exhibition catalogue: “JE MEHR ICH ZEICHNE. ZEICHNUNG ALS WELTENTWURF”, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, 2010)

Pia Linz was born in Kronberg i.T. in 1964 and studied painting and graphics at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Her work is represented internationally in exhibitions and public collections. Various scholarships have taken her to Rome (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, 1989/90), London (Hessische Kulturstiftung, 2005/06) and New York (Berliner Senatskanzlei-Kulturelle Angelegenheiten, 2010/2011), among others. In 2015, she was awarded the HAP Grieshaber Prize by VG Bild-Kunst for her work. Since 2016, she has been a professor of drawing at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art.

Christoph Peters

Tea bowls, nothing else.

In November 2019, I visited an exhibition at the Urasenke Tea School Museum in Kyoto, which featured famous vessels for the tea ceremony as well as 17th and 18th century manuscripts with simple drawings of the objects on display.

Since I have been working intensively with Japanese tea ceramics for more than twenty years and had been looking for a new approach to my own drawing work for quite some time, I combined the two during the exhibition and came up with the idea of approaching some of the tea bowls I had collected over time in drawing. After months of experimenting, I decided on the technique of dot hatching, because on the one hand it allows great precision, and on the other hand it dispenses with anything superficially individual.

To draw, I place the respective bowl on a pedestal at eye level and illuminate it as evenly as possible. Drawing is both a scanning of the contours and surfaces with eye and pencil and an approach to the invisible behind it.

Christoph Peters was born in Kalkar on the Lower Rhine in 1966. From 1988 to 1994 he studied painting at the Karlsruhe Art Academy with H.E. Kalinowski and G. Neusel, finally as a master student of Meuser. He then worked for five years as an air passenger control officer at Frankfurt Airport. Since 2000 he has been living in Berlin as a writer and illustrator.

Most recently, he published the novels “Das Jahr der Katze” (2018) and “Dorfroman” (2020), the story collection “Selfie mit Sheikh” (2017), as well as the essay “Diese wunderbare Bitterkeit – Leben mit Tee” (2016). His work has received numerous awards, including the Aspekte Literature Prize in 1999, the Friedrich Hoelderlin Prize in 2016 and the Wolfgang Koeppen Literature Prize in 2018.

Parts of his collection of Japanese ceramics were on display in the exhibition “Among Friends” at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, in 2019/20.

In 2020, the Otto Ubbelohde House, Goßfelden, showed tea bowls and drawings. The exhibition was accompanied by the catalogue “Teeschalen, sonst nichts”.

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

9 June to 18 August 2021

Matias Bechtold and Maike Sander
Other worlds

Matias Bechtold and Maike Sander show a world made of cardboard in the studio im HOCHHAUS. While Maike Sander focuses on bird sculptures for this exhibition, Matias Bechtold creates cityscapes.
The exhibition “Other Worlds” provides an insight into the artistic possibilities inherent in the mundane material.

“Matias Bechtold’s works are fascinating because they inspire the imagination both through mega-structures and as models of entire cityscapes or of gigantic buildings. At the same time, they are so rich in detail that one can literally lose oneself in them while looking at them and forget that it is a model. For this special experience between vision, illusion and realism, however, it is not only the uniformity of the material from which they are made that plays an important role. Above all, the consistent facture of its processing, in which the material is almost made to disappear, is essential. In their conceptual and artistic coherence, Bechtold’s works indeed bring to view worlds all their own, which comment critically and ironically on or purposefully transcend the world we live in.” (Laura Mars, 2015)

Mathias Bechtold, born in Ibiza in 1955, builds models of houses and entire cityscapes out of packaging in the broadest sense. He layers skyscrapers with curious interiors out of cake wrappers or sushi boxes, cities and islands out of cardboard. Partly fictitious or inspired by literature, such as Alfred Kubin, or based on existing things as a projection into a future. This is how cities like Cologne or Berlin with skyscrapers and futuristic traffic routes have come into being and how Ibiza has grown together into a single urban mesh.

“Maike Sander puts things in relation to people. And lo and behold – things are livelier than we thought. The hoover, asthmatic, earns its mercy, whether it still sucks or not. The fish: a living being, not just a tasty display in the fish shop. The monkey: ditto – and? Doesn’t he look a bit like Uncle Herbert? In this way, chairs also become something like relatives, brother and sister. You don’t have to love each other to be related, that happens in the best families. These chairs are rarely moved, they move within themselves and groan under the weight of human beings.
(…) The material used by Sander, paper, cardboard and algae, is ephemeral per se. You cannot own the chairs and armchairs; they are clearly characterised as artistic artefacts with no practical value. Instead, they convey an idea of transient being, of the respective individual, which is unique and unrepeatable.
(…) Perhaps that is the nature of things as well as of people: ageing, constant change. Maike Sander’s sculptures sharpen our view of things and people anew, subtly conveying a respect that makes us aware of a possible new sustainability that affects not only our relationship to things but also to other people”. (Martin Stather)

Maike Sander, born in Lüneburg in 1965, has been working with this material in her sculptural work for a long time. In addition to animals, which she usually creates in original sizes and sometimes brings to life with other materials, such as algae, she also uses everyday objects as models. She has created entire furnishings, from chairs to beds to bathrobes, out of cardboard. The obvious fragility creates a special atmosphere that would be comparable to a museality, but also immediately breaks it.
*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

Annette Kisling, Jens Franke
Leonard Wertgen

Exhibition from 19 January to 2 June 2021

Doshi Doshi Doshi

Born in 1927, the architect Balkrishna Doshi has decisively shaped the Indian city of Ahmedabad with his architectural work and his social commitment. In addition to his work as an architect, he is an urban planner, professor, theorist and founder of the Faculty of Architecture at CEPT University in Ahmedabad.

Since 2009, Leonard Wertgen and Jens Franke (in collaboration with Niklas Fanelsa, Marius Helten and Björn Martenson) have been investigating the city of Ahmedabad with their continuing research. Their interest is to understand the city’s built environment in its diversity and contradictions and to make perceptible the parallelism of spatial concepts that always include social, political and historical moments. In 2016, they had the opportunity to talk to Balkrishna Doshi about his work and the city of Ahmedabad. This conversation forms the starting point of the exhibition “Doshi Doshi”. In addition, as a further part of the research project, film footage and photographs of the following buildings from Ahmedabad by Balkrishna Doshi will be shown: Institute of Indology (1962), Central Bank of India (1967), Premabhai Hall (1972), LIC Housing (1976) and Sangath (1981).

Annette Kisling’s photographic work is dedicated to a very well-known building by Balkrishna Doshi, the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (1963 to 1983). In the winter of 2014, she had the opportunity to walk through and photograph the campus of the Institute of Management during the day and at night over the period of two weeks. The place is designed in such a way that interior and exterior spaces correspond with each other, merge into each other. For the exhibition, mainly photographs were selected that provide insights into precisely these in-between areas, in addition to some interior spaces, for example the library of the institute.

All Videos: Uwe Jonas, Pictures: Thomas Bruns

Raum 1

In this video, the first room of the exhibition, but also the whole concept is explained by the artists.

Raum 2

Architekturraum

ALLES III

Eröffnung am 28. Januar um 19 Uhr

wegen Corona Geschlossen

Mit:

Wolfgang Aichner – Sonja Alhäuser – Michelle Alperin – Nándor Angstenberger – Martin Assig – Clara Bahlsen – bankleer – Heike Baranowsky – Heike Kati Barath – Horst Bartnig – Jürgen Baumann – Michael Bause – Konstantin Bayer – Matias Bechtold – Kai-Annett Becker – Matthias Beckmann – Oliver van den Berg – Holger Biermann – Roland Boden – Manuel Bonik – Patrick Borchers – Kai Bornhöft – Benedikt Braun – Thomas Bruns – Marcel Buehler – Ingmar Bruhn – Matthew Burbidge – Astrid Busch – Dirk Busch – Salomé Chkheidze-Mohs – Herbert De Colle – Marula di Como – Chris Costan – Swen Daemen – Henrike Daum – Dellbrügge & de Moll – Anne Dettmer – Helmut Dick – Andreas Drewer – Jesper Dyrehauge – Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout – Manfred Eichhorn – Axel Eichhorst – Jürgen Eisenacher – Dana Engfer – Christel Fetzer – Frederik Foert – Franziska Frey – Sabine Friesicke – Stella Geppert – Catherine Gerberon – Ingo Gerken – Katrin Glanz – Thorsten Goldberg – Carola Goellner – Kerstin Gottschalk – Reinhold Gottwald – Michael Gumhold – Markus Guschelbauer – Massoud Graf–Hachempour – Kim Dotty Hachmann – Ulrich Hakel – Heike Hamann – Klaus Hartmann – Lisa Haselbek – Tanja Hehn – Tina Isabella Hild – Gerhard Himmer – Annika Hippler – Christian Hoischen – Birgit Hölmer – Ralf Homann – Irène Hug – Anja Ibsch – Andrea Imwiehe – Henrik Jacob – Gunilla Jähnichen – Zora Janković – Anna Jermolaewa – Uwe Jonas – Jaeeun Jung – Yuki Jungesblut – Martin Kaltwasser – Mi Jean Kang – Franco Kappl – Judith Karcheter – Veronika Kellndorfer – Werner Kernebeck – Annette Kisling – Ulrike & Günther-Jürgen Klein – Andreas Knäbel – Andreas Koch – Eva–Maria Kollischan – Susanne Kohler – Karen Koltermann – Andreas Kotulla – Ulrike Kötz – Vanja Krajnc – Inge Krause – Annette Kuhl – Susanne Kutter – Verena Kyselka – Chantal Labinski – Pia Lanzinger – Michael Lapuks – Seraphina Lenz – Pia Linz – Antonia Low – Liz Magno – Fritz Margull – Enikö Márton – Matthias Mayer – Howard McCalebb – Manfred Michl – Penka Mincheva – Ulrike Mohr – Leo de Munk – Berit Myrebøe – Silvia Nettekoven – Gertrud Neuhaus – Sybille Neumeyer – Gabriele Obermaier – Lorcan O’Byrne – Juergen O. Olbrich – Bea Otto – Jürgen Palmtag – Jürgen Paas – Günther Pedrotti – Roman Pfeffer – Andrea Pichl – Torsten Prothmann – Marcel Prüfert – Katja Pudor – Maria–Leena Räihälä – Mirja Reuter –– Gerda Riechert – Kai Richter – Sebastian Rogler – Matthias Roth – Rasso Rottenfusser – Julia Sand – Maike Sander – Matthias Schamp – Gisela Schattenburg – Claudia Schoemig – Iris Schomaker – An Seebach – Olivia W. Seiling – Daniel Seiple – Spunk Seipel – Johanna Smiatek – Soyoung Shon – Soopum Sohn – Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag – Elisabeth Sonneck – Petra Spielhagen – Ute Sroka – Anne Staszkiewicz – Christian Stock – Tommy Støckel – Stoll & Wachall – ststs – Sven Stuckenschmidt – Betty Stürmer – Max Sudhues – Caro Suerkemper – Gaby Taplick – Johanna Thompson – Thea Timm – Peter Torp – Tim Trantenroth – Lukas Troberg – Andrea Übelacker – Timm Ulrichs – Marcos Vidal – Anke Völk – Line Wasner – Christine Weber – Albert Weis – Ute Weiss Leder – Markus Willeke – HS Winkler – René Wirths – Gloria Zein – Barbara Zenner – Christof Zwiene