Artists of the exhibitions

Artists of the exhibition "Die Intensität der Orte – Strömung und Abstraktion" / 28.7.-31.8.2024

In their works, Anja Behrens and Anna-Maria Kursawe deal with the expressive power of landscape under the influence of the respective composition and the site-specific light. They capture the contrasting moods of north and south. On display is a juxtaposition of arctic interpretations of nature and Mediterranean cityscapes. By comparing the two artists' different ways of seeing and expressing themselves - here the Nordic flow, there the southern abstraction - the intensity and formative power of places is made visible. 

Artists of the exhibition "Schnittstellen" / 16.6.-20.7.2024

Claudia Desgranges (*1953, lives and works in Cologne) is influenced in her painting by abstract expressionism, color field painting and American minimalism. The support of the works is aluminum, which seems to float flat on the exhibition walls, kept invisibly at a distance. The background shimmers with metallic reflections through delicate layers of color and unfolds its own play of light and color. `Time Strips` and `Composite Paintings´ are among the most striking groups of works by Claudia Desgranges. In her time strips, Claudia Desgranges composes oscillating color sequences and empty spaces that, depending on the day, appear more flat or staccato. In the composite paintings, the artist brings two or more painted aluminum plates together to create a picture composition. The usually different distance of the plates from the wall underlines the depth effect of the works and their object-like nature. The `Rough Cuts´ series, which is being shown at augsburg contemporary, consists of individual "color cuts" that are put together to form a composition. Simply by overlaying a few very broad, continuous brushstrokes, the paint material itself generates a wealth of the finest color modulations and contrasts such as light - dark, bright - dull, warm - cold. The almost monochrome surfaces appear floating, infinite and immaterial. They work as a colored overall composition, but also as individual images and generate opposing associations such as closeness and distance, fleetingness and movement, presence and infinity.

The works of Angelika Hoegerl  (*1962, lives and works in Utting am Ammersee) are characterized by a geometric design language that is based on an intensive study of historical architectural plans, especially the floor plans of Gothic cathedrals. She researches the basic principles of vault construction by analyzing the systems of cross-ribbed vaults and thus uncovers the architectural "essences" of our building history. Various cross-ribbed structures and vault crossings that are extracted from floor plans are modified and combined to create wall reliefs. In her more recent works, she combines the essential elements of medieval vault architecture with the modern structural designs of the Italian architect Pier Luigi Nervi. She implements the lightness of these space-design elements primarily with textile materials, which she uses to cover and encase her architectural structures. Materials such as artificial leather car headliner fabric meet light blue velvet, or roofing felt is combined with shiny lining materials. Another textile material is transparent organza silk in delicate shades, which she uses like architects' tracing paper, creating floor plan drawings in several layers on top of each other, which represent an additional genre in her work. The visible overlays of the drawing and the fabric fibers create a moiré effect, which also creates a three-dimensional effect from certain perspectives. 

Oleksiy Koval "The Big Easy" / 5.5.-8.6.2024

Painting is the application of color(s) to a surface using the hand or any tool. This means that a painter has to deal with color, surface and movement. We now know of countless color systems, and the division of the surface has also become a science, but the movement when painting remains "an unexplored forest". The movements in succession over time and in the juxtaposition of the surface were and still are my guidelines in painting to this day. At 17, I didn't know this exactly, but I experienced the rhythm of applying colors intensively for the first time. In my mid-20s, it became clear to me that rhythm gives form to the application of color. ... The rhythm brings out the primary characteristics of painting. If the rhythm of the color on the surface is right, the painting is right. I have color and a surface in front of me. I put the color on the surface and get 1, 2 or 8. I paint until I have defeated the surface! From: Ping Pong. Oleksiy Koval in an interview with Selima Niggl, 2023.

Daniel Man "between thoughts" / 17.3.-20.4.2024

Daniel Man's works are influenced by the traditions of Chinese culture. He combines them with contemporary forms of expression such as graffiti and the attitudes of contemporary art. His works are an ode to the connection between past and present, between Eastern philosophy and Western aesthetics. Both canvas works and works on paper can be seen as a study of the ambivalence of the human mind, which Daniel Man creates without prior planning, purely in a reciprocal process. In them there are moments of calm and unrest, chaos and order, which manifest themselves in a constant dance between thoughts. In his implementation, Man often goes beyond the canvas by integrating paper cut works and painted walls and ceilings of the exhibition space. Such a work can only be understood by walking along it. It therefore represents a bridge to Chinese scroll paintings, in which exploring the landscape image by looking is essential. This artistic fusion of surface and space creates an immersive experience that invites the viewer to enter the world between thoughts. Inspired by the words of the American poet Wendell Berry, who said: "(…) When we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. (…)", Daniel Man lets us see through his art that true insight often lies in the spaces between thoughts. It is in this space between thoughts where we can find a deep connection to our innermost self and the world around us. "between thoughts" is not just an exhibition of images, but a place of reflection and contemplation. It is an invitation to open the mind and explore the beauty and complexity of the world that lies between thoughts.

Bettina Hutschek "TYPEWRITTEN" / 21.1.-2.3.2024

With the exhibition “TYPEWRITTEN" shows Bettina Hutschek a cross-section of typewriter works created over more than 20 years. The series “UTE“ (2002) Dream images influenced by news reports, family memories and concrete poetry; in “Maltese Proverbs“ (2013) the artist illustrates proverbs; and in the latest series “Typewriting“ (2022-24) she combines collage elements with typewritten texts, using the elements of image and writing in a humorous and experimental way. In a specially designed augsburg-contemporary Bettina Hutschek is showing works on paper and artist's books in an installation with wall drawings. Bettina Hutschek is an artist and filmmaker who deals with questions of historiography in her work. She examines narratives, forms of knowledge transfer and the influence of images and language on collective experience. In this way, she usually develops complex artistic analyses of contemporary phenomena and creates imaginary worlds and narratives of "extended history".

Artists of the exhibition "Overlays" / 26.11.-23.12.2023

Katharina Schellenberger works on what she finds and places old things in a new context. This approach is also what characterizes the series “Documentas”. It was created from a “waste product” in a way. On the documenta15 (2022) Katharina Schellenberger observed how an artist on the communal “lumbung press“ prints and sorted out some of the sheets. Schellenberger asked about them and was allowed to take the misprints with him for further use. The artist used them as a support for a series of 15 expressive drawings, for which she rubbed oil paints directly onto the sheet with her fingers. As with other series, she worked without preliminary drawings or templates. The additional challenge that Schellenberger faced with the “Documentas“ was to rework each sheet with as wide a range of variations as possible using the few selected means. The paper works can be viewed individually, but also function as parts of a story. Katharina Schellenberger (*1978 in Schweinfurt) lives and works in Munich and Landsberg am Lech. She studied painting for two years at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. Her works have been shown in Germany, Denmark and Austria, among other places. She took part in the last Venice Biennale as a guest artist in the country contribution from Bolivia.

Maria Wallenstål-Schoenberg applies color in translucent layers for her watercolors, thereby achieving a particular luminosity and intensity of the respective color tone. In the artist's works, color manifests itself in the form of abstract forms. They refer to nature, but do not depict anything objective; rather, they convey atmospheric moods. Warm and cool colors interact to create an exciting contrast. Maria Wallenstål-Schoenberg often relies on the effect of complementary colors. The characteristic flow of the watercolors requires intervention by the artist, who can only control the color movements to a limited extent. Chance becomes a player in the artistic process. Towards the edges, the color condenses into fine lines and delimits the shapes from the layers below. This principle of layering leads to a variety of color values: they range from delicate nuances to rich colors. Maria Wallenstål-Schoenberg (*1959 in Uppsala, Sweden) lives and works in Munich. She studied in Uppsala, Ulm and with Jerry Zeniuk in Munich. Her works have been shown in exhibitions in Germany, Austria and Italy.

Artist of the exhibition "VERTIEFUNGEN" / 22.10.-18.11.2023

Karen Irmer works in the media of photography and video. Although her works are in the tradition of nature and landscape photography, the artist is not concerned with staging specific sections of nature. Rather, she aims to make the processual nature of visible reality tangible and to condense atmospheric moods in her works. In doing so, she repeatedly explores the relationship between illusion and reality and questions traditional patterns of perception. This play with perception is also shown in her works from the series "Permanently fleeting", which were created during a scholarship stay in Klagenfurt, Austria. A clear perception of what is depicted is replaced by blurriness and ambiguity. Trees and their reflections combine in the photographic works to form a barely separable unit and prevent the viewer from clearly determining their position. The smooth surface of the acrylic glass, which integrates the surroundings of the image into the photograph, creates additional irritation. Karen Irmer (* 1974 in Friedberg, Bavaria) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Sean Scully. Her works have been shown at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, the Kunstverein in Munich and at the VII Tashkent Biennale of Contemporary Art. Karen Irmer taught at the Braunschweig Academy of Fine Arts (HBK). Since 2015 she has been an appointed member of the German Photographic Academy.

Ulrich Egger deals with architectural spaces, real and imaginary places as well as non-places. His artistic work develops in the field of tension between photography, sculpture and architecture. The experience of spaces is integrated into the artistic process, be it through their documentation using photography or through their sculptural translation. In this way, architecture opens up to a new interpretation in which reflections and forms of light deceptively deform our perception of space and provide a glimpse of an inner dimension in which the familiar is alienated. In Egger's sculptures, parts of windows, architectural elements and building materials are put together. These assemblages and reconstructions are attempts to give the relationship to spaces an emotional character. Time leaves its mark on architecture through the use of the people who inhabit these houses. The artist works to pass on a historical testimony of the sensitive experience of spaces.

Ulrich Egger (* 1959 in St. Valentin auf der Heide, South Tyrol) studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and graduated in 1985. During his artistic career, his works have been shown in numerous international solo and group exhibitions in public and private spaces.

Artist of the exhibition "Kontext" / 17.9.-14.10.2023

What happens when two image cosmoses meet? In the best case, they create new contexts of meaning and insights. Images always exist in a context, for example the context in which they were created. The works of Stauber and Frattini themselves create contexts that now enter into new relationships in the joint exhibition.

In the exhibition "Context" two painters meet who base their positions on a very fundamental concept of painting. For both of them, painting is not just a method of creating representational images, but a process of making something visible that is only brought to life through the application of paint. In Frattini's work, memories and feelings appear primarily in symbolic structures, while in Stauber's pictures it is usually the areas of color that convey what is seen and what is longed for. In their works, both create a space of "in-between" - between abstraction and representation. Painting can thus be experienced as something that makes us question our visual perception.

Both Stauber and Frattini experiment with placing paintings or fragments of painting in relation to space. The interweaving of image levels creates overlaps and irritations in equal measure. The artists thus raise the question of how meaning arises in our perception, how contexts are formed and how images become readable.

Manuel Frattini, born in 1968 in Offenburg, completed his painting studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe under Prof. Peter Dreher and Prof. Silvia Bächli as a master student. Scholarships enabled him to spend time abroad in France, Japan, Korea and Canada, among others. Since 1999 his works have been shown in international exhibitions, for example at the “Contemporary Art Space Osaka CASO”, Gallery Optica, Montréal, Württemberg Art Association Stuttgart, Kunstverein Freiburg or in 2009 and 2013 at the Ecke Galerie in Augsburg. The last institutional solo exhibition “Traces of the Outside World” took place in February 2023 at the Morat Foundation for Art and Art History in Freiburg. Manuel Frattini lives and works in Freiburg.

Angela Stauber, born in 1977 in Munich, lives and works there, has spent several time abroad, including in Great Britain in 2015-16. She completed her studies in painting and graphics in 2005 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich as a master student under Prof. Sean Scully.

Her works have been shown at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in the exhibition “Mythos Atelier”, at fairs such as Preview Berlin, Art Karlsruhe, Roter Kunstsalon, currently at the Positions Berlin Art Fair, as well as in numerous exhibitions and participations in art associations such as Brühl and Munich. Institutional presentations in Great Britain at the Minories Gallery, in Finland at the Nellimarka Museum and South Korea at the Sejong Culture Center in Seoul, and a report on her work as part of the Metropolis program on ARTE are testament to her international recognition. The scholarship for fine arts from the City of Munich and the grant from the City West Action Fund in Berlin enabled her to carry out extensive urban projects in both cities in 2014 and 2015. In her long-standing collaboration with the Galerie Zweigstelle Berlin, she has been able to realize numerous solo and group exhibitions.

Artist the exhibition "air from another planet" / 13.8.-9.9.2023

Anja Güthoff puts things that seem to have nothing to do with one another into a new context and arranges them according to her own rules. Wild and tamed, nature and culture, painting and photography form symbiotic relationships. At the same time, Güthoff's works always have something processual about them. They seem to expand and grow - like nature, from which many of the found objects come. From expansive, exuberant installations to the smallest combinations of a few found objects, the works are not revealed at a glance. Rather, they challenge the viewer to adopt different perspectives in order to understand the work in all its complexity. The moment of discovery plays an important role for both the viewer and the artist, as her works are preceded by searching and collecting.

Anja Güthoff (*1965) studied at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, specializing in drawing. She has received the City of Augsburg's Fine Arts Prize, the Swabian Art Prize, and the City of Gersthofen's Fine Arts Prize, among other awards. Anja Güthoff lives and works in Augsburg.

Reiner Heidorn addresses the relationship between man and nature with his oversized paintings. His works have an evocative effect and allow the viewer to immerse themselves in them. Microscopic elements reminiscent of air bubbles can be found in the mystical natural spaces, as can grass and moss-like structures. Various shades of blue and green from lime green to turquoise evoke associations with forests, lakes and underwater worlds. As an autodidact, Heidorn has developed his own painting technique and coined the term "dissolutio" for his pictures, which means something like disappearance. This gives the works an additional relevance to the present: As a result of climatic changes, certain experiences of nature will no longer be possible, and people will become further alienated from their natural environment. Reiner Heidorn (*1966) is autodidact and works with the medium of painting. His works have been shown in various German cities and in France, Italy, Brazil and the USA, among others. Reiner Heidorn lives and works in Weilheim.

Artist the exhibition "Lineations" / 9.7.-5.8.2023

Veronica Wenger explores the possibilities of drawing in her artistic work. Delicate, as if breathed lines of poetic aesthetics contrast with powerful, dynamic structures. Wenger's works unfold between the poles of abstraction and representationalism. They show echoes of architecture, of the body, of writing. Although the works have a reason in the objective world, the reference object loses its meaning in the course of the artistic process. So even supposed words remain pure lines in their illegibility. Veronika Wenger works on MDF, paper and cardboard and uses sprays as well as various pens. This creates sometimes bright areas of color that overlay delicate lines. Veronika Wenger (*1967) studied drawing, video and lithography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Her works have been shown at home and abroad, including in Amsterdam, Istanbul, London, Odessa, Berlin and Wuhan. Veronika Wenger lives and works in Munich and Penna San Giovanni.

Florian Lechner is a trained sculptor and has dedicated himself as an artist to abstraction. In his artistic research he deals with aesthetic questions of our increasingly digital world. Lechner creates physical, digital, virtual, pictorial and sculptural spaces. The partly hybrid processes result in abstract, aesthetic experience spaces in the form of performative states. Lechner's works deal with, among other things, aesthetic production and reception, with themes of abstraction and concretization, with scale and disscale, with materialization and materialization. The media status in the stream of images of our time, constitution through distribution, the fluid and the network space are the starting points for the artist's artistic investigations. Florian Lechner (*1981) studied as a stonemason and sculptor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and was a master student of Prof. Hermann Pitz. His works have been shown in Munich, Frankfurt aM and Hanover, among others. Florian Lechner lives and works in Munich and Freiburg.

Artists of the exhibition "complementary" / 4.6.-1.7.2023

Complementarity is a central theme in the work of Herbert X. Maier. Maier's pictures oscillate around two seemingly opposing poles. On the one hand, an empirical object is examined painterly for its form and appears without its context and usually greatly enlarged in a multi-layered structure with transparent color glazes as a color space body. Diametrically opposed to this, color space bodies are created from purely painterly means, from surfaces and colors that condense in countless layers of glaze. Both types of picture are confronted in a complementary way. Herbert X. Maier on his approach: "In the complementarity of the picture confrontation, I look for the gap and the transition between the genres, the closed and the open. The static and the fluid, the volume, the depth and the surface structure, the stable and the unstable at the same time." Herbert X. Maier, born in 1959, lives and works in Freiburg. Solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, works in public ownership (State of Baden-Württemberg, Morat Institute Freiburg, Deutsche Bank collection, Commerzbank collection, municipal and state museums). His numerous work grants in North and South America and Armenia are particularly noteworthy. His works reflect his numerous trips abroad to all parts of the world, most recently to Laos and Cambodia in 2023. 

Thomas Wunsch (lives in Wiesbaden) occupies a very independent position in the field of photography. His works distance themselves from the classic canon of themes. They do not aim to capture the state of reality at a specific point in time and do not refer to a specific object. Wunsch's works are defined by abstract expressionist structures. They show the interplay of shadow and light, of blurred and razor-sharp passages. With their gestural and haptic aesthetics, they approach the medium of painting and at the same time question the role of photography. What should and what may photography do? Thomas Wunsch's works do not give the viewer a concrete reference point to a reference object in reality, but instead open up an even greater space for association. Beyond a location, they create new worlds that reinforce the enigmatic and dreamlike nature of the works. Thomas Wunsch began taking abstract photographs in 2000. His works have been exhibited at the Huantie Times Art Museum in Beijing, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, the Overbeck Museum in Bremen, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Goethe Institute in Frankfurt and the Goethe Institute in Phnom Penh, among others. Wunsch's photographs can also be found on the LP and CD covers of the renowned German record company ECM.

Artists of the exhibition "latent | image | sculptural" / 7.5.-27.5.2023

Johannes Franzen's artistic work is based on the possibilities of generative artificial intelligence. For "latent" he uses a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), in which two neural networks - a generator and a discriminator - compete against each other. The generator tries to generate realistic images, while the discriminator has the task of finding out whether these images are real or fake. In the course of the learning process, the generator improves its image generation ability, the discriminator optimizes its ability to distinguish between real and generated images. This contradictory process continues until the generator produces images that are indistinguishable from real images. Franzen's crucial conceptual intervention consists in withholding categories from the AI, thus systematically undermining the machine's process. | Johannes Franzen studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt in the film class as a master student under Professor Peter Kubelka and at the Cooper Union in New York. He lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Offenbach.

Florian Ecker deals with sculpture and its materiality, marble, in his work. With his work "sculptural image" he pursues a new approach for him: he approaches the pictorial side of sculpture. Ecker colors various contoured white marble fragments in bright colors. In a scientific manner, he works with colored light reflections that arise from the refraction of light within the crystalline structure of the marble and are used in petrography to identify rocks by visual comparison. At the same time, Ecker's work refers to the multi-colored nature of ancient sculptures. These were by no means as white as the marble from which they were made. Rather, they wore colorful clothes and had skin, hair and eye colors. With his new work "sculptural image" Ecker continues to explore the boundaries of sculpture. | Florian Ecker (*1977) studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich as a master student of Prof. Olaf Nicolai and lives and works in Wasentegernbach.

Artist of the exhibition "New Chapter" / 9.10.-20.12.2022

Ivo Ringe, (*1951), studied sculpture, graphic design and painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Joseph Beuys and Rolf Sackenheim. He is particularly interested in proportions in painting and the vibrational relationships between colors. He lives as a freelance artist, curator and lecturer in Cologne. In his brand new cycle he shows colorful, energetic pictures, all of which were created in the South of France, where he stayed in various places this summer following an invitation from institutions. The picture themes, which are layered on at least three levels and differ significantly from one another in terms of form, content and color, merge into a predominantly complementary-colored picture. His geometric-abstract interactions of his colors and proportions show the joie de vivre and vibrations of the southern light.

Artist of the exhibition "In the Bunker" / 3.7.-13.8.2022

Veronika Veit combines different aspects in her sculptures, installations and films to create a design of a new reality. She questions the reliability of social and physical systems, both in the digital and the material world. Control or loss of control and temporal systems are two central themes in Veit's work, which has been concerned with our false belief that we have things under control since the beginning of her artistic work. She questions whether we are even capable of seeing through what we are doing and how complex processes are connected. In this way, she creates new systems in which contradictory things meet and combine to form something new that can be understood more associatively than logically.

Artist the exhibition "Landscape" / 3.4.-14.5.2022

The work of the American Trisha Kanellopoulos is strongly influenced by her instinctive and visual impressions of the landscape. The artist follows a strict compositional structure that is dominated by a horizontal structure. The desired haptic impression is achieved by using earth as the primary painting material. Layers are thus created on the canvas, one on top of the other, which in their hardness and softness, coarseness and fineness always combine to form a poetic overall picture of form and space. "For years I have been using self-made natural paints based on earth from all over the world to understand the aesthetics of the line and the elegance of the landscape. My involuntary visual impressions of the landscape affect my painting and are reflected in my pictures. In addition, I use them to visualize a balance between severity and mobility - a unity of form, space and clarity." | Artist statement

Rüdiger Lange is primarily a landscape painter. His choice of motifs is mostly classic: the river, the rock, the sky, individual trees and bushes. He has broken new ground in his painting style: he has swapped the brush for a spatula, and his picture supports are plywood panels. His sensitivity to recognize the countless nuances of structure, color and light in nature, to absorb them in his inner eye and then to transport them into his own painterly composition, creates pictures that on the one hand convey an immense power and energy, and on the other hand a strange melancholy and delicate beauty. Rüdiger Lange locates his pictures, i.e. he mainly paints very specific landscapes en plein air. For years he has devoted himself to the LECH river with all its originality and problems caused by its mechanization. In this ever-evolving group of works with predominantly large-format oil paintings, images of the entire course of the Lech are created, from the original Lech in Tyrol to the industrialized Lech in Bavaria, the 'tamed Lech', as Dr. Stefan Lindl published in 2014.



Artists of the exhibition "wintry" / 14.11.-18.12.2021

Christoph Dittrich (*1971 in Ulm), studied at the Munich Academy of Free Painting, master student of Hans Baschang, lives and works in Augsburg. In his many years of work, Christoph Dittrich has researched space-body constellations using methods of overlay, layering or clusters. In this exhibition he is showing a large-format picture from a brand new group of works. The shapes or spatial bodies that are typical for him are no longer circular with hard contours like in the Dots, nor are they translucent like in the Liquides, but are softer and more flowing. The painted organic or vegetal motifs are reminiscent of nests in a fantasy landscape. The border crosser between abstraction and object has once again succeeded in completely reinterpreting his theme.

Zita Habarta has its artistic roots in drawing and sculptural design. Using the computer as an experimental tool, she adds a new dimension to her skills. As a result of long series of experiments developed on the computer, she has created a digital kit with which she transfers the information she has recorded from the world around us in order to create new perceptual spaces, possibilities and associations. The mostly monochrome-looking new creations, sculptural spatial structures, fragments and visions appear as if they were freed from artificial mass by a 3D printer and made visible outside the computer - as fine art pigment prints or as experimental fade-in images (since 2019) that are presented on installation screens.

"In the pictures of  Susanne Jung the quiet colors that challenge the viewer to look at them come together in clear distinctions: the more intense colors differ from the more restrained, the narrow from the wide, the bluish from the reddish, the dense from the more transparent. And yet one perception is also reflected in the other: the darker is also permeated by brightness, the narrow takes part in the wide, the warmer also shimmers in the cooler. As a result, thinking dissolves into limitations and merges into a merging of connections without dissolving the clear distinction." Dr. Erich Franz, LWL State Museum for Art and Cultural History, Münster.

Timo Weil (*1992 in Munich), studied product design at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. He was employed by the furniture designers Stefan Diez and Konstantin Grcic, has been self-employed since 2021 and lives in Berlin. Timo Weil explores the boundaries between design and sculpture with the stools shown, 'possession ban'. He was inspired by the pelvic skeleton of a whale, a find from Ghana, which he had scanned and printed using a 3D printing process by the Friedberg company Voxeljet in order to reproduce it. The designed base frames are very strict and minimalist in shape as a counterpoint to the organic shape of the skeleton, which serves as a seat. This raises the question that Stefan Eberstadt already asked in his Bamberg stools: Is it a stool or a sculpture, i.e. a functional object or a work of art?

Artists of the exhibition "autumnal" / 18.9.-31.10.2021

The focus of Renate Balda (*1955) is dedicated to the work process itself. She lets "the material work" and makes the surface and the pure color the subject of her art. As a result, the smallest features in the structure and the gentlest color transitions become the main actors in her works. Artist statement: "The material does what it can, that's enough for me." The exhibition shows gold-leaf color panels (shellac ink on Japanese paper, gold edges, each 18 x 18 cm from 2020). They are the artist's homage to Italian panel painting of the Trecento.

Zandra Harms (*1968) has developed a very unique and clear language in her works to produce very contemporary sensibilities and moods. Tents, curtains, figures, faces. A room emerges from the darkness. The pastel colors are rubbed onto the support in thin layers. Figures and elements are formed by repeatedly layering layers on top of each other. The viewer experiences the space very directly and in many different ways. From dreamlike memories to momentary encounters. The depictions seem removed from reality and yet are all the more immediately readable.

Thomas Hellinger (*1956) creates images, spatial images that are reminiscent of urban architecture and, beyond them, create landscapes of different light phenomena. The process of creation, however, is not a depiction of visible objects and spatial contexts, but rather creates the opposite direction: formal structures and the overlay of painted fragments of reality produce the images. They are images that address our vision: the movement of looking in the process of perception.

As a three-dimensional composition element, Spomenko Skrbic (*1969) creates picture supports from wooden panels that slide next to and on top of each other. These take on the central role in the interaction of color and its application. The color material itself and its processing as well as the three-dimensional compositional elements lead a dialogue between serial color architecture and autonomous compositional finding. The self-confident craftsmanship demonstrated emphasizes the aura of authenticity. In his pictures, with their sometimes archaic-looking materiality, Škrbić skilfully plays with the interaction of density and transparency, picture surface and depth effect and establishes a polar network of relationships between surface, picture space and color form. 

Artists of the exhibition "summery" / 18.7.- 11.9.21

Starting point for the paper works of Udo Rutschmann are often his three-dimensional works. The artist develops series of drawings that use the auto-generated terrain of his ceramic “incubator” works as a starting point for graphic investigations. Using a special printing technique, he transfers parts of the ceramic surfaces onto paper. As if he were trying to find suitable systems for the worlds he has created himself, he creates grids, embeds the reliefs that have been brought into two dimensions in protective colored areas of graphite, and gives them support through spatial boundaries made of white correction pen. The trained architect Rutschmann, who can still draw on a wealth of visualization techniques beyond sophisticated computer programs, sneaks up to the artist's side here. With his precise knowledge of historical models, not only in concrete and constructive art, he tries to take his themes in depth in serial circumnavigation. Text: MA Birgit Höppl | By Udo Rutschmann we show 2 paper works as well as 4 new oscillator works. This presentation is accompanied by an early work by the British performance artist Bruce McLean with the title " Be attention BE " and the work " & or & or & o " by the American conceptual artist  Lawrence Weiner.     

Illusion and reality – statics and process. Karen Irmer's powerful photographic work "Zustand der Veränderung" | 6.-26.6.21

Ice floes piled up in bizarre formations are reflected in the water. Gnarled tree shapes are reflected in a lake. In Karen Irmer's photographic works in the "State of Change" series, we encounter natural spaces with a high atmospheric intensity. The portrait-format scenes appear mystical, mysterious, and sometimes threatening. But only at first glance do we think that they are a true depiction of reality. We quickly get the feeling that something is wrong with these images. Guided by our need for orientation, we check the photographs for their truthfulness in order to ultimately expose the incongruence between perception and reality.

The supposed reflections of ice floes, branches, spray and clouds turn out to be an illusion. Right in the middle of the picture, a line runs through the unity of the composition. Karen Irmer has added a second image to the upper photo, rotated by 180 degrees. She took the photographs from different perspectives, sometimes even in different places. By combining the two images, Irmer generates artificial worlds in which a surreal space-time unity manifests itself. And yet: despite knowing about their composition, we perceive the two photographs as a whole.

Irmer calls her works a state of change, thereby already referring to a paradox. While a state describes something static, change is always associated with a process. Irmer's pictures are ultimately paradoxes too. They explore the relationship between illusion and reality, unite these contradictory poles through their aesthetics and derive their special tension from this. Irmer's works repeatedly trigger irritations and question patterns of perception. This game with our perception runs like a common thread through the artist's oeuvre. Simone Kimmel, 2021

Artists of the exhibition "Domestic Space | Sculpture" / 25.4. - 29.5.2021

Florian Lechner (*1981, lives in Munich) operates as a sculptor in both analogue-physical and digital-virtual space. He deconstructs and condenses, questions the conventions of sculpture as well as the status of a trace of action, a relic. It is about the static object through to the potential possibility. In this way he creates spaces of experience in the discourse about a sculptural-plastic presence. His abstract works in the border area of reality and fiction can certainly stand as symbols for our demanding, digitally influenced world, in which the question can increasingly be asked whether this distinction still makes sense. The current project "Clippings“ uses 3D software such as 3D printers to explore the question of whether printed sculptures take on a similar function and role for representation and embodiment as is the case with photography.

Katrin Leitner (lives in Kassel) is a researcher who is looking for methods of artistic thinking, working and arguing, for the various ways, states and structures of perception and consciousness, for forms of processing. In her artistic work, she repeatedly formulates fundamental questions about the present, past and future of our existence, about space and time, and deals with how knowledge can be preserved and passed on within human communities. Art as an existential part of our lives, the creation of cultural information for future generations, the complex relationships between our social structures and interpersonal fabric, as well as an intuitively good, highly sensitive and sensual approach to the material itself, form the foundation of her artistic activities.

Jürgen Paas (*1958, lives in Essen) formally takes up elements of minimal art - he creates circles, rectangles, squares, cubes and translates them into an open painting system that questions individual aspects such as color, form and space. In doing so, he combines systematics and order with chance and irregularity, which is expressed in an extremely varied and sensual material painting. Differently colored figurations painted and mounted on the wall are in dialogue with the archive systems of holders, color panels and color bands placed on or next to them. The regular geometric shapes of circle, rectangle and square provide a mathematical clarity, but in their interaction they suggest a rhythmic spatial sound that, in the context of synesthetic perception, brings to light a polyphonic total work of art. Text: Dr. Gabriele Uelsberg, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn

Artists the exhibition "Domestic Space | Painting" / 14.3. - 17.4.2021 

The new series “Praise of the Shadow" by Carolin Leyck (*1967, lives in Munich), which she is showing in Augsburg, is inspired by the book of the same name by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. In it, the author describes differences between Japanese and European aesthetics. Above all, the examples of the use of light and shadow and the meaning of black in Japan challenged the artist to work with this color for the first time. Black is actually not a color, but the absence of color. It absorbs the light almost completely. Here it becomes the stage for the fullness and beauty of the other colors. In contrast to black, the application of color is airy and transparent. The colorful, almost calligraphic brushstrokes almost glow from within. In search of a special color tone in the picture, the artist moves between experience, chance and intuition. The motifs arise from the interpretation of organic natural forms. The painting process is a matter of adding and subtracting. Like a sculptor, she models the figure, which ultimately stands there confidently. They are organic sculptures that move joyfully and humorously through the space and, in contrast to the black, appear so light and fluttery.

Marcus Lichtmannegger (*1969, lives in Berlin) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich as a student of Sean Scully, diploma 2007. In addition to his artistic practice, he works in the social sector as a carer for people with mental and physical disabilities. At first glance, Marcus Lichtmannegger's art is a spontaneous, intuitive and abstract painting that appears light and casual. The current works in the exhibition were all created over the course of 2020 and early 2021. Paper works that came from a flow of daily painting practice were put aside and continued a few days or weeks later. Layers of time formed. A wide variety of influences from the boredom of the lockdown, such as handicrafts, find their way into these latest works. For example in the form of embroidery or collage. Gender and material clichés are consciously broken. Drawing and thread experience equality. Even holding on to an apparently unsuccessful work seems like a further development of his social work in dealing with art. On the one hand anti-heroic, but always connected to art history, which does not follow the classical canon here.

Angela Stauber (*1977, lives in Munich, master student of Sean Scully) placed a painting that reflects the interface between inside and outside, between public and private space. What can be seen is a passage situation that leads inwards when viewed from the outside and outwards when viewed from the interior. The viewer's gaze is not guided in a targeted manner, but is almost distracted in a staccato of colored areas and focused on the picture surface. There, the actual painting combines with reflections or the impressions of the other side. This creates a play between depth and flat surface. The artist wants to set a colorful sign, recognizable from afar, especially for the outdoor space, that art is still alive even in these times. The title "Immer hier“ is intended to underline the perpetual existence and presence of art. Therefore, it is important to Stauber to use the window as a stage, as a canvas visible from the outside. Anyone looking at the window work in the interior is reminded of a sacred space and the old tradition of church windows, especially because of the bright colors. However, upon closer inspection, this association quickly dissolves, as the painting is more gestural and spontaneous. A publication will be published on this work with a contribution by Wolfgang Ullrich.

Artists of the exhibition "Domestic Space Photography" / 31.1. - 6.3.2021

Anja Behrens lives in Hamburg. She works as an advertising photographer for various companies. At the same time, she is constantly working on free art projects that are shown in exhibitions and in public spaces. "I am absolutely fascinated by color, haptics, harmony/disharmony and structures on a large and small scale. Subtle approaches and various levels always play a big role for me because in life nothing seems clear and unambiguous to me. In my work, I can deal with themes that concern and hold me in a completely intuitive way. That is a great privilege!"

Karen Irmer (born 1974, lives and works in Augsburg) became known for her work, which breaks down the boundaries between film and photography. The artist carefully observes places that are inaccessible due to their basic nature or by definition, and in doing so touches on the inexplicable longing for the unknown that sometimes grips people. She creates works in which the boundaries between the real and imagined world are blurred. We enter uncertain terrain where our perception is constantly questioned. In search of image and film material, the artist travels to Japan and Korea, to Arctic Iceland and to remote islands. She hikes through uninhabited and barren areas to find inspiration for her artistic work.

The work of Kirk Sora challenge the viewer in many different ways. You have to take your time to discover their secret. Each picture is a self-contained statement, and at the same time an invitation to pause and contemplate. Kirk Sora studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and was a master student of Hans Peter Adamski. "My photos are dreams painted with sunlight, made to share the stories that the light tells me with the world."

Artists of the exhibition "glow" 15.11. - 19.12.2020

Inge Gutbrod (born 1963) explores the properties of wax, artistically interprets it, and works out its sensuality. She combines it with color, whether as an additive or as colored areas, forms it in rows, in space, in strands, on the surface, as piles, on strips, in grids, in scaffolding. In other words, arrangements. And she is interested in change, in not being the same, in informal variation, in controlled surrender. This also applies when she only works with color - without wax - as a print or as a drawing.

Annekatrin Lemke (born 1980) is a wood sculptor and in her work she explores the relationships between surface, color, form, structure and light. Her preferred material is linden wood. The works have an object-like character and appear as an intermediate stage between sculpture and picture. They are completed by the incident light, which emphasizes the plasticity and structure and clearly highlights the object-like character.

Gisela Hoffmann (born 1963) works with industrially produced materials such as acrylic glass. Various technical processes such as screen printing or sandblasting, which she carries out in her own workshop, create objects and multiples. The fluorescent material used collects the incident light in the glass body and releases it again at its cut edges and roughened areas. The refraction of light and the cleverly placed colors determine the space or charge it with energy.

Artist Statement Javis Lauva: "All of my works from the last few years bear the title 'Swarm', combined with a number made up of the date and key figures. My works can be classified in the field of 'elementary painting', relying entirely on relational relationships of position, extent, colour and rhythm. The term 'swarm' places the self-referential reference of painting in the realm of nature as well as in social processes of interrelated organisational movements." 

Ortwin Michl (born 1942) is a painter and was a professor and at times dean at the Georg-Simon-Ohm University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg; Michl is considered one of the fathers of the Kunst Galerie Fürth, which opened in 2002. His abstract panel paintings - mostly in relation to nature - are about color, pictorial space and rhythm, about purely painterly aspects of representation.

Artist Statement A. Paola Neumann: "My paintings are planned. They are preceded by series of watercolors, some of which are then selected for implementation in large format. The construction of the painting in oil paint requires many opaque and translucent layers and usually takes several weeks to months. I work exclusively with brushes. In the end, however, the brush marks are hardly visible and the surface has a satin finish."