Jumping Over Shadows

The Dancer Fine Kwiatkowski

07/09/—16/11/25

 

Anne Rose Bekker, Carlfriedrich Claus, Lutz Dammbeck, Willehad Grafenhorst, Mona Höke, Schang Hutter, Fine Kwiatkowski, Dieter Ladewig, Helge Leiberg, Madeleine Saludas, Adalbert Scheffler, Hans Scheuerecker, Christine Schlegel, Wolfgang Scholz, Barbara Schumann, Heinrich Schwarz, Klaus Sobolewski, Rosario Rapallini, Dieter Roth, Michael Vorfeld, Ulla Walter

 

Fine Kwiatkowski (born 1956 in Kallenhardt, West Germany, raised in Dresden from late 1956 onwards; now lives in Sicily, Italy, and Dresden, Germany) has developed a distinctive movement language spanning dance, mime, and performance since the late 1970s. Under her first name, Fine, which has become a hallmark of her character, she became a figure who left conceptual and aesthetic traces in the visual arts, theater and dance, and especially in the areas in between. Her roots in artistry and improvisation led her to a radically physical art form that consistently engages the space and directly addresses the audience. The gestures in Fine’s dance are expressive, her presence intense.

 

The exhibition explores Fine’s work from various perspectives: Performances, films, paintings, and installations demonstrate how she operated as an autonomous artist—and where colleagues and associates began to shape images and meanings from her presence.

 

Particularly in the 1980s, Fine acted as an integrative border crosser between subcultural niches, artistic scenes, generations, and lifestyles, which she moved between, which inspired her, and which she was inspired by. Here, she acted as a mediator between dance and music in performance and visual art. Fine thus became a motif herself.

 

Room M2 presents artists and associates whose own perspectives on the figure of Fine were reflected in their works. Some of the images reflect others‘ perspectives on the dancer or testify to collaborative productions with artists from other disciplines. This reveals the specific understanding of occupying space, establishing boundaries, and, at the same time, dissolving boundaries through movement.

 

The common principle of the works gathered in M3 is the scriptural, the written word. In concrete or abstract form, letters, signs, and symbolic forms were used here, revealing references to Fine’s formal language or serving as a reference and conceptual echo chamber. Fine’s dance vocabulary can be characterized as a language (of the body), as an articulation that is not based on words: she improvises, yet draws on (micro)movements, patterns, and systems that, while not always entirely new, are always integrated into other processes and related to other contexts.

 

Room S3 will feature two intermedial works created as part of the ongoing project series cri du coeur, initiated by Fine and Willehad Grafenhorst in 2003: a large-scale installation of video and sound, and a film work. These new works, deeply rooted in the present, address global, contemporary discourses and realities regarding climate change and the relationship between humans and nature.

 

Oscillating between autonomy and attribution, Fine became a living figure, a self-determined and actively acting projection surface in the literal sense. Her dance is never merely representation, but always also a sensitive gesture of resistance and self-assertion.