Photo: Jakob Kirchheim. Reisefreiheit, Filmstill

February 14 until April 15, 2024

Jakob Kirchheim

Reisefreiheit

Animierte Dokumentation, HD, 77:49, 2022

The 9-euro ticket made Germany-wide regional train travel popular in summer 2022.
For many years, I have been traveling between Berlin and Munich mostly in this way: exclusively with regional trains, several changes and many stops on different routes through the eastern German states. From Hof, I usually take the Alex-Bahn to Munich.

Extensive photo and video material was created on these journeys, which was used in five self-published books by 2013: Wochenend-Ticket, Quer durchs Land Vol. 1 to 3 and Regio Reisen Berlin – Chemnitz. In addition to annotated photo series and graphic photo editing, research on the places passed and the events associated with them was included in the illustrated books.

This material and footage from later trips forms the basis for the video Reisefreiheit. The title refers to both the time of reunification and the restricted conditions during the pandemic. Places, names and signs are repeated on the respective routes specified by the train timetable. Traveling in this way is very time-consuming in two respects: it takes a long time and the time can be experienced intensively in confrontation with the visual sensations that emerge. Such tour de force trips through East German and Bavarian provinces offer revealing insights into the sometimes “blossoming” landscapes, the state of the railroad stations, industrial and commercial facilities and what can be called the backyards of Germany.

From an artistic point of view, there are a variety of themes and challenges, from photographing from and in moving trains to reflections, blurring, image cropping and their subsequent design as image sequences-and their subsequent design as image sequences. Repetition in variations emerges as a basic motif. Photographic momentary perceptions, perspective, temporal conditions, subjective perspectives constitute the travel-film sequence. What has already been photographed is very likely to be reactivated from visual memory and photographed again, but in a different way. In the video, the montage condenses and contrasts the documentary with painterly-graphic interpretation or alienation. The video was started in fall 2020 and can be seen as a whole or as a sequence of 33 short films.

Leo de Munk
Colors

The exhibition Colors by Leo de Munk opens on February 13, 2024 at 6 pm and shows paintings and objects until April 15, 2024.

Leo de Munk‘s work is colorful and multi-layered in terms of materials and processes, although he has also turned to black and white in recent years. This is mainly due to the increased focus on printmaking and to some extent to the change in a product that de Munk uses for his sculptures, the tumble dryer, which is now only produced in black and white.

At the heart of his sculptural work are everyday objects of daily use, mostly cheap, colorful plastic objects that are deformed, merge into one another and can grow into large structures.

Leo de Munk’s work can be read as a commentary on the affluent society that surrounds us with all its charms, but the interpretation is left to the viewer.

Giorgio Cappozzo & Robert Gschwantner

The Perfect Circle, 8:58 min, 2007

A glassy lake. On the water a rowing boat, in it an elegantly dressed man. The boat reaches the stone-lined shore. The man steps onto the trimmed grass, walks along the minimalist edge of the canal. In front of him stretch serially repeated squares of trees, a circle of water, lines of perspective. At first glance, the video work The Perfect Circle (2007) seems shot in a utopian landscape. The cool atmosphere emphasizes the accurate geometries of trees, greenery and water. Yet this space is real: it is the Grand Canal in the park of Versailles. André Le Notrê designed this topography of artificial nature. He thus anticipated, as early as the 17th century, a modern spatial design that later dominated European urban planning. Main, transverse and diagonal axes are connected by round, semicircular and star-shaped squares. 350 years later, the geometries of the axial cross and circle reappear: far away from Europe in the planning of a major Chinese project. Lingang New City, a port city designed on the drawing board for 800,000 inhabitants, will also have a lake as its center. The design by architect Meinhard von Gerkan envisions a modern ideal city, with water as its focal point.

The Reflected Hexagon, 9:04 min, 2010

Snow crystals consist of water and are formed in the air. At low temperatures they form simple hexagonal prisms. Water and air are used here as metaphors – for the ancient port Portus near Rome as well as the airport Tegel in Berlin. Snow crystals, Portus and Tegel have one thing in common: their hexagonal shape.
Tegel Airport was inaugurated in 1974, and its hexagonal terminal bears many formal and functional similarities to the ancient port facility Portus (112 AD), which was built around a hexagonal harbor basin.
Similar to airport gates, the wharves had numbered columns assigned to ships for berthing. There were stores to supply food and a “palace lounge” for the elite to use while waiting for their ship to depart. The harbor basin could accommodate up to 200 tall galleys, which moved around in it in circles – like the cabs in Tegel. However, the formation of a water current was prevented by the hexagonal shape. Portus and Tegel were international transshipment points whose unique shape effectively enabled the supply and exchange of people and goods from two metropolises in different eras.

EYE-LAND, Robert Gschwantner, 5:07 min, 2014

IJsseloog – the IJssel Eye – can be imagined as a mythical territory, an island with a hole at the edge of the inhabited world. Infinitely deep, it hides what civilization hides from itself. Paradisiacal and tranquil, covered by plants and inhabited by wild animals and inaccessible to ordinary visitors, the island harbors in its depths the toxic waste that civilization can no longer sustain. The man-made island in the middle of the Ketel Sea in the Netherlands acts as a kind of black box for the self-destructive accumulations of civilization – a history that must be periodically encapsulated in order to continue.
The island of IJsseloog was completed in 1999 in the shape of an eye, whose pupil is a circular lake one kilometer in diameter. The lake serves as a dumping ground for contaminated heavy metal sludge deposited over the past 150 years at the mouth of the Rhine and Meuse rivers. The amount of toxic waste stored on the island is 23 million cubic meters and will hold for the next 30 years until it will be full and completely sealed. If the project goes as planned, the island will be transformed into an ecological vacation island after it is sealed.

Robert Gschwantner

Backdrift

September 20 – November 19, 2023

In December 1999, the deep-sea tanker Erika sank off the coast of Brittany, causing an enormous oil slick. I transferred this metaphorical term for oil sloshing across the sea into its concrete meaning by collecting spilled oil on site and filling it with thin, transparent PVC tubes, from which I had previously woven a carpet. It was the beginning of a series of projects that explore European landscapes that have been transformed in extraordinary ways by human impact. Originally focused on ecology, my focus expanded to include the topographical aspects of man-made waterscapes. These are islands, lakes, canals, waterfalls, constructed for political, economic or technical considerations, some of whose genesis dates back centuries or millennia. The water preserves these artificial landscape forms and ground plans. As solitaires, they shape the naturally evolved environment. Petroleum, water, mud, and other specific relics that I collect on site are preserved like landscape relics by serving as filler for my carpets and paintings made of PVC tubes. 

Room 2

The rugs in the Lost & Found series are a kind of remake and continuation of my Merci Total project about the oil spill caused by the sinking of the oil tanker Erika 20 years ago. While an oil spill remains more or less localized, millions of tons of plastic waste are spread in the world’s oceans every year, some of which washes back onto beaches.

In 2020, I collected plastic particles, sand and seawater on a beach on the small, uninhabited Greek island of Yalis and sprayed them into hand-woven carpets made of PVC hoses. Inside the hoses, the sand sinks to the bottom in the seawater, while plastic particles rise to the top, blocking each other and forming a random pattern.

Room 1

τέχνη (Techni), the Greek word for art, is a fitting term to describe the landscape around the Corinth Canal. The canal, built at great expense in the 19th century, is a huge intervention in nature, separating the Peloponnese from the mainland and turning it into an island. Only a few decades after its construction, the canal lost its importance for navigation, as modern ships are too large to pass through. Geometry, landscape, technology, art and history are facets of my pictorial objects. Each work from the current series of works, The Dividing Line, consists of multiple layers and perspectives interwoven with them. Spanning the image support are PVC tubes filled with seawater from the canal. Behind them is a glass plate, half of which is covered with a geometric motif. The unpainted empty spaces reveal a mirror mounted in the picture’s background. Depending on the viewer’s angle of vision, current satellite photographs and landscape images around Corinth from the early 19th century are reflected in it, framed by a classic wooden frame. The effect of the landscapes appearing is created by the fact that these landscape motifs are on the back of the geometrically painted front. By being experienced as an ephemeral mirror image, the landscape floats in space like an apparition and merges with the concretely graspable front to form a complex whole.

ALLES V

Sonja Alhäuser – Michelle Alperin & Joe Neave – Elisabeth Ajtay – Nándor Angstenberger – Martin Assig – Clara Bahlsen – Emiliano Baiocchi – bankleer – Heike Kati Barath – Michael Bause – Kai-Annett Becker – Matthias Beckmann – Christoph Beer – Franziska Beilfuß – Arnold Berger – Holger Biermann – Manuel Bonik – Gunnar Borbe – Patrick Borchers – Kai Bornhöft – Ivan Boskovic – David Braithwaite – Susanne Britz – Simone Brühl – Ingmar Bruhn – Thomas Bruns – Astrid Busch – Dirk Busch – Alexander Callsen – Kyung-hwa Choi-Ahoi – Herbert De Colle – Marula di Como – Chris Costan – Henrike Daum – Dellbrügge & de Moll – Nanett Dietz – Chris Dietzel – Andreas Drewer – Tina Dunkel – Rouven Dürr – Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout – Axel Eichhorst – Manfred Eichhorn – Jürgen Eisenacher – Ether Elia – Dana Engfer – Carola Ernst – Media Esfarjani – Stefan Fahrnländer – Sabine Fassl – Christel Fetzer – Frederik Foert – Franziska Frey – Sabine Friesicke – Catherine Gerberon – Ingo Gerken – Katrin Glanz – Thorsten Goldberg – Kerstin Gottschalk – Massoud Graf-Hachempour – Robert Gschwantner – Kim Dotty Hachmann – Ulrich Hakel – Zandra Harms – Klaus Hartmann – Lisa Haselbek – Ulrich Heinke – Tanja Hehn – Andreas Helfer – Gerhard Himmer – Annika Hippler – Reinhard Hölker – Ralf Homann – Stephan Homann – Alexander Horn – Fabian Hub – Franziska Hünig – Gunilla Jähnichen – Zora Janković – Maarten Janssen – Gabriele Jerke – Uwe Jonas – Yuki Jungesblut – Nikos Kalaitzis – Mi Jean Kang – Judith Karcheter – Peter Kees – Werner Kernebeck – Soo Youn Kim – Annette Kisling – Ulrike & Günther-Jürgen Klein – Susanne Knaack – Win Knowlton – Andreas Koch – Silke Koch – Eva-Maria Kollischan – Karen Koltermann – Sebastian Körbs – Inge Krause – Christine Kriegerowski – Käthe Kruse – Annette Kuhl – Susanne Kutter – Patricia Lambertus – Nina Langbehn – Gesa Lange – Michael Lapuks – Julia Lazarus – Seraphina Lenz – Sabine Linse – Pia Linz – Christine Lohr – Agnes Lörincz – Petra Lottje – Enikö Márton – Rei Matsushima – Matthias Mayer – Udo Meinel – Manfred Michl – Ulrike Mohr – Mariella Mosler – Leo de Munk – Berit Myrebøe – Ursula Neugebauer – Gertrud Neuhaus – Fernando Niño-Sánchez – NOMDEPLUM – Anja Nowak – Gabriele Obermaier – Lorcan O’Byrne – Mayumi Okabayashi – Juergen O. Olbrich – Jürgen Paas – Lydia Paasche – Christina Paetsch – Jürgen Palmtag – Javier Peñafiel – Roman Pfeffer – Pfelder – Andrea Pichl – Torsten Prothmann – Katja Pudor – Emily Pütter – Maria-Leena Räihälä – Andrea van Reimersdahl – Mirja Reuter – Kai Richter – Renée Ridgway – Gerda Riechert – Yannick Riemer – Matthias Röhrborn – Matthias Roth – rasso rottenfusser – Maike Sander – Walter Santoni – Matthias Schamp – Gisela Schattenburg – Sandra Schlipkoeter – Alexandra Schlund – Sylvia Schultes – Richard Schütz – An Seebach – Olivia W. Seiling – Spunk Seipel – Daniel Seiple – Fabian Seiz – Tanja Selzer – Soji Shimizu – Soyoung Shon – Martina Siefert – Hildegard Skowasch – Elisabeth Sonneck – Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag – Christina Speer – Petra Spielhagen – Ute Sroka – Anne Staszkiewicz – Alexander Steig – Gabi Steinhauser – Christian Stock – Stock’n’Wolf & Ritterskamp – ststs – Betty Stürmer – Lorant Szathmary – Thea Timm – Peter Torp – Tim Trantenroth – Petra Trenkel – Lukas Troberg – Andrea Übelacker – Anne Ullrich – Timm Ulrichs – Marc Vidal – Anke Völk – Ivo Weber – Albert Weis – Ute Weiss Leder – Markus Willeke – HS Winkler – Andreas Wolf – Markus Wüste – Barbara Zenner – Julia Ziegler – Sandra Zuanovic – H.H. Zwanzig

Astrid Busch

Watching Tanker, 2022, 26:49 min

The port city of Le Havre in the north of France is particularly marked by the destruction of the Second World War. During numerous stays, I have been interested not only in the post-war architecture of the architect Auguste Perret, but also in the port and the container ships arriving at high frequency, which supply this city not only with goods, but also with hope, dreams and longing. Therefore, I decided to take the sea route there myself and enter this port on a container ship.
The seas have always linked the world, because ships use them to bring goods and people to the most remote places. Thus, they have multiple functions as a transportation and communication space, as well as a place of longing and memory.
There is hardly any other place than a ship where superstition, sailor’s yarn and romance collide so harshly with real everyday life. Surrounded by the sea, one quickly loses one’s sense of time, proportions, speed and distances. The transition from reality to fiction within the world at sea is fluid. Not only metaphorically is the ship, which forms a self-contained space at sea, connected to all ports and times via the narratives and the cargo.

26th April to 25th June 2023

Astrid Busch

world in minds

In the past, the world came to the city with the ships; today, they are sealed-off areas and are only regarded as gateways to the world in spirit. With the exhibition “world in minds”, Astrid Busch transports visitors to the major ports of four cities. She artistically approaches the history and present of the ports of Hamburg, Antwerp in Belgium, Le Havre in France, and Istanbul in Turkey, as well as the pace of their shipping traffic. By linking different media and time levels, she creates a dense network of references and a variety of possible readings. She builds settings of installations and objects, photography and film, projection and works on paper, with which she examines places for their sensory perceptibility and their effect on people.

Astrid Busch studied fine art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg and at the Berlin Weißensee School of Art. Her works have been included in exhibitions at the Maison des Arts Solange-Baudoux in Évreux, France; the Modern Art Museum in Yerevan, Armenia; the Hetjens Museum in Düsseldorf, Germany; the Museum Kunst der Westküste on the island of Föhr, Germany; and the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Germany.

Bild: R.J. Kirsch, Hai

Tierisch

Sonja Alhäuser, Ingmar Bruhn, Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi, R. J. Kirsch,

Manfred Michl, Susanne Ring

The exhibition Tierisch Opens on November 29, 2022 at 7 pm and shows, until January 25, 2023, with different artistic means views of animals.

Sonja Alhäuser draws many animals that play a role as food and describes, for example, the process of preparation. Recently, horses also occupy a larger, non-culinary, space in her work.

Ingmar Bruhn concentrates in his painting on wild animals, which he captures with rough strokes in their aloofness.

Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi tells stories in her drawings that deal with the relationship of people to their (domestic) animals.

R. J. Kirsch paints in strong colors animals that he encounters in magazines or the like and thus usually appear more exotic.

Manfred Michl considers in his painting and drawing the interaction between animals and humans.

Susanne Ring deals in her sculptural work with animal forms that can seem unreal but always refer to something animal.

Filmstill: Tubs, Sven Boeck, 2020

Short Films Sven Boeck

Sven Boeck was born in Berlin in 1965. After training as a mechanic and working as a camera assistant, assistant director and editor for GDR television, Sven Boeck studied directing at an external technical college from 1987. In 1990, together with other partners from the media industry, he founded the company KOPPFILM, of which he was managing director until 2010. After retraining as a tax clerk, he has worked at the satirical magazine Eulenspiegel as managing director and publishing director since 2015.

SMV 8.5, 2022, length: 11:24

The Selective Microvoltmeter is a receiver and measuring device for high-frequency signals. As a mechanic apprentice at VEB Messelektronik I assembled devices like this one. I bought one on eBay at the beginning of the year. With pictures from the device and sounds received from it, I remember my time as a mechanic.

Advice: Christina Schmidt

Stopmotion 1985, 1985/2020 Length: 1:53

A find while dubbing old film material. This attempt from 1985 on 16mm film with a Russian Krasnogorsk camera is damaged by light at the mirror aperture. The film reel remained uncut at my place, so unlike my completed early experimental works, it did not go to waste when Koppfilm was liquidated. The music is by Hans Schanderl (www.hansschanderl.de).

Tubes, 2020 Length: 5:33

A local history walk along heating pipes in Berlin. Aerial shots via Google Earth Pro, music: Hans Schanderl, consulting: Christina Schmidt, David Jeremy Achilles.

Driving a car GDR 1988, 2019 Length: 7:16

Material from my video installation for the exhibition “Memo Abacus” in May 2019 in Berlin. The photos were taken by me in 1988. The traffic moves past us endlessly, the drivers move from light to dark.

OSTKREUZ – Susanne no longer lives here, 2022, length: 12:16

I’ve known the area around Ostkreuz station for a long time. When we moved there at the end of 2019 with the satirical magazine “Eulenspiegel” (for which I work), I remembered the story I wrote about Susanne and this area thirty years earlier. Susanne no longer lives here, but in a dream I met her again when she visited the place of her childhood. Author, camera and direction: Sven Boeck, editing: Jürgen Winkelblech

LENINGRAD – The Pictures Shine with Certainty of Victory, 2020, length: 5:17

A few dozen slides (one from Volgograd), a tourist’s souvenir purchase in the seventies, the colours bleached at the edges by chemical vapours, superimposed by me they begin to glow in surreal colours. Is that still socialist realism? Music: Hans Schanderl www.hansschanderl.de

Wall, 2020 Length: 4:55

Thoughts at the Berlin Wall memorial. Advice: Christina Schmidt, marine images from aboard the MV Ocean Viking in the central Mediterranean, (c) Flavio Gasperini/ SOS MEDITERRANEE and from www.pexels.com

50 Years of Utopia

Holger Biermann, Thomas Bruns, Marula Di Como,

Birgit Szepanski, Lukas Troberg

The exhibition 50 Years of Utopia opens on 30 August 2022 at 7 p.m. and shows, until 23 November 2022, a view with artistic means of the urban structure Fennpfuhl.How does it live in the built utopia?

Holger Biermann captures everyday life in this area with his situational street photography; he moved around Fennpfuhl for weeks to find the motifs.

Thomas Brun‘s room-high architectural photographs convey the breathtaking urbanity of the area. He combines them with photographs of the sculptures and leisure activities from the Fennpfuhl Park.

Marula Di Como and Birgit Szepanski refer to historical aspects of the high-rise housing estate in their installation works.

Marula Di Como uses wooden elements to update decision-making moments in the planning and development of the neighbourhood. In her textile installation, Birgit Szepanski deals with the reality of homelessness, which was not visible in Fennpfuhl in the GDR and is only partially visible today.

Lukas Troberg turns the functional architecture of the area into a theme and stages ventilation pipes, bent bollards and protective hoops as extravagant guests of the exhibition.

They visibly don’t care what others think and stage their exclusivity in an overly conspicuous way. So much so that one could get the impression that they chose their appearance with the public in mind, from whom they actually wanted to distance themselves…