Leerraum

weiß/schwarz

24/09—19/11/23

 

Karl-Heinz Adler, Erdal Ates, Martin Bartels, Antje Blumenstein, Teresa Casanueva, Danville Chadbourne, Carlfriedrich Claus, Frank Coldewey, DAG, Frank Diersch, Selma Dronkers, Nicole Fehling, Robert Fitterman & Klaus Killisch, Christine Geiszler, Frank Gottsmann, Ulrike Hogrebe, Günther Hornig, Gisoo Kim, Ayumi Kobayashi, Michael Kruscha, Marko Lipuš, Oliver Lunn, Michael Morgner, Wilhelm Müller, Sophia Schama, Esther Stocker, Antje Taubert, Bernd Uhde, Albert Weis

 

A first version of the exhibition, designed by the artist and curator Michael Kruscha, was shown in the Kunstraum Braugasse in Hoyerswerda in spring 23. The exhibition now presented has been expanded to include works from the collection of the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art (BLMK) as well as a new, complementary exhibition chapter. While the first version of the show aimed to create empty and open spaces through white image surfaces, the new, additional chapter of the second exhibition version focuses on black image spots or the black space in the image.

 

“Explorations in and with the ‘empty space’:

First of all, it is unmistakable: in contemporary art there are very different approaches to making this ‚minor‘ aspect of the image tangible. Reduction on the one hand, minimalism on the other, i.e. emptying and appearing, mark the poles within which the emptiness unfolds. With 30 artistic positions, the exhibition revolves around an unusual subject area. It goes without saying that the focus of artistic research is hardly on motif and object, but rather on the emergence of pure surface, of greatly reduced symbolism, of withdrawn structure and faction. In this way, the few, the traces, the hint or the disappearance, the marginal appearance can be identified as elements that open up this dimension to the pictorial space, which often has a contemplative character.

 

In the history of art, phenomena can often be observed that follow the ‘horror vacui’, i.e. the fear of the empty surface (as in the Baroque), but in return, especially in modernity and its successor, it is also revealed as a result of abstraction: especially in painting, the ‘amor pleni’, the penchant for open space.

 

An exciting moment will be the encounter between the special artistic image explorations and the real landscape of change in Lusatia. Because the post-industrial clearance through devastation, demolition and dismantling leaves behind empty spaces, wastelands or ‘lost places’, as the zeitgeist points out. What not only characterizes the local landscape, but also sometimes rumbles in people’s minds. This is important to understand and develop as creative potential. The approximately 80 works of art presented could prove to be reference spaces in a variety of ways, and not just symbolically.” (Text by Jörg Sperling)