Thoughts Play Hide and Seek
Exhibition texts
Wie-yi T. Lauw, artist of hiding
Wie-yi loves to hide or alienate things. This means changing them so much that they are still reminiscent of their origin, but at the same time can also mean many other things, i.e. they have become "alien". Art usually tries to show things, to depict and exhibit them. So why does Wie-yi do exactly the opposite? There are several reasons, she says. For one thing, hidden things stimulate the imagination and make us think for ourselves about what is hidden behind the façade. Above all, however, Wie-yi's work is about identity, about who we are. There is often a big difference between the way we perceive ourselves or what our biography says about us and what other people think about us, for example based on our appearance. Wie-yi herself, for example, was born in Vienna and speaks Austrian (Viennese is her favourite language). However, her ancestors come from Indonesia and China and her name also sounds different from most German or Austrian names. The Viennese registry office even claims that her name does not exist. (That's nonsense, of course, because that's her name.) Many objects also tell complex stories, but are often only perceived or "read" in a certain way. By disguising, hiding and alienating these things, Wie-yi attempts to make the complex and ambiguous visible.
Of bodies and traces with Nicole Wendel
Large drawings hang in Nicole's studio. Although they are often wild and full of movement, they have one thing in common: they are all black and white. When we ask Nicole why this is the case, she replies that she sometimes sees and perceives so much that it is a relief when she doesn't have to think about colours. Then the world becomes a little easier. We find out that she has already done a few small pictures in blue and promises to let us know when she does something really colourful. And lo and behold: after our visit to the studio, Nicole dreamt that she would do the work for the exhibition here in colour - using natural pigments, i.e. colours straight from the earth.Nicole's drawings don't show objects or people, but traces of the movements of her body. She first thought about traces when she was very young: she is left-handed and spent a long time trying out how a stroke changes when she draws it with her left or right hand. The stroke became a trace that she could still tell which hand it came from afterwards. After all, our bodies are involved in everything we do, and Nicole now draws with more than just her hands.
Searching for traces with Nadia Kaabi-Linke
Nadia introduces us to her husband Timo, the two of them form a collective and work on many pieces together. Their son, who is our age, is also there. His name Mika-Akim can be pronounced forwards and backwards. Mika-Akim will later make a very special appearance at Nadia's presentation of her works.
When we ask Nadia how much time she devotes to art, she says: All the time! But of course she is not in her studio from morning to night, painting, gluing or crafting. Most of the time, she says, a work of art occupies her mind.
It starts with an idea, which she then pursues. The artist is particularly interested in places and their history(ies). When she asks people about a place, they tell stories that she would never have expected and Nadia tries to collect their traces. She uses different techniques and materials for this, such as charcoal or dust.
Nadia and Timo observe that we deal with problems differently in different countries. In Germany, roads are built very sturdily and repaired solidly; it is important to us that everything we do lasts a long time. In Ukraine, problems are often solved quickly and superficially, something is repaired, but in such a way that it breaks again after a short time. But that is not necessarily worse. On the contrary: in Ukraine, people are used to finding quick, uncomplicated solutions, they are resourceful.
Dive into non-human worlds with Anne Duk Hee Jordan
Dukhee often likes to work with music in her creations. She used to want to be a rock star, but admits that she wasn't disciplined enough to learn an instrument really well. Later it was the same with marine biology. What she likes about art is that she can be a musician and a researcher, an artist and a biologist - all together and a bit of each. In contrast to biology and science in general, not everything in art always has to be rational, i.e. logically explainable. Although Dukhee is very interested in biology and often works closely with scientists, imagination also plays a major role in her artworks. She particularly likes the fact that you can develop a different view of the world, and the non-human perspective is important to Dukhee, for example. But what does that mean? Humans, for example, cannot perceive the song of whales in the same way as underwater creatures. The many enlarged, distorted and sometimes invented forms of the luminous creatures on the walls of the fabric cave are also intended to challenge the human scientific view of other life forms. After all, the deep sea - just like the universe - is a place that has been explored many times and yet still harbours the greatest secrets. And the nice thing about things we don't yet know everything about is that we can make a lot of things up.
In search of clues with Ilit Azoulay
Ilit Azoulay comes from Israel and studied photography. (Her first camera was a gift from her grandfather, long before her studies. Did he realise that Ilit had a great talent for photography?) In her studio in Schöneberg, she assembles collages from thousands and thousands of photos - mainly on the computer - like a mosaic. Sometimes it takes years, that's how time-consuming it is. Sometimes Ilit also integrates sound into the collages. Ilit's pictures tell stories. Stories that Ilit is not actually allowed to talk about - only through her art. The stories were entrusted to her by people who are great storytellers and have a wealth of knowledge that hardly anyone else knows. After listening to the secret stories, Ilit spends about a year researching objects related to the stories and photographing them. To make sure she doesn't forget anything and keeps track of the objects and stories, she hangs labels of the objects on the wall and makes notes about the photos: short texts in Hebrew, colourful stickers with letters and numbers on them like a secret code... She has come up with her very own system! We proceeded like detectives and tried to read the clues. What mysterious story is behind the work with the monkey? We came up with lots of adventurous ideas. Are we right with our guesses? Ilit smiles kindly - and cloaks herself in silence. Art is full of secrets!
Dafna Maimon's body-feeling worlds
Dafna Maimon's studio is populated by strange creatures: the drawings on the wall are crowded with wobbly and bulging shapes with eyes and other body parts; a huge belly that looks like a pillow sits enthroned in the centre of the room; and knobbly toes that look like they are made of stone are lined up on a table. Objects, costumes and tools hang and lie everywhere, seemingly waiting to be tried out and touched. But painting and sculpture are just the beginning. Dafna tells us that she also works a lot with film and performance.
It quickly becomes clear that the human body plays an important role in Dafna's art. However, the artist is not primarily interested in realistically reproducing body parts. Rather, through her art she tries to explore the relationship between our bodies and our thoughts and thoughts and feelings and to play with them. This can be a memory of a physical feeling or our emotional relationship to different body parts, for example.
For example, Dafna finds it really exciting that many people are ashamed of certain body parts. These are often breasts or other genitals, for example, but feet and toes are also often associated with shame.
Tomás Saraceno: Dream dancer and spider whisperer
In the garden of Tomás' studio is a model of a building that is to be constructed. Five polygonal mini-rooms are stacked on top of and next to each other and look as if they would be perfect for a playground. There are even nets for jumping on. Inside there is a much smaller model where we can see that in the end 60 of the mini rooms are to be nested inside each other. Doesn't that fall over? No, and this is exactly the kind of project Tomás loves - he has already hung cubes in the sky in various places that looked as if they were floating. Of course, everything is safe and secured so that nothing can happen to anyone. But what the works all have in common is the amazement at the constructs, which seem to be completely unaffected by gravity. There is also a laboratory in the studio, where it is much warmer. Many of the lab's inhabitants come from the tropics - we are in the realm of spiders! Here we meet Tomás, who is almost bursting with enthusiasm about the animals weaving elaborate webs. Various spiders have built an entire city in a huge frame - large and small, dense and holey, white and golden webs are woven on top of, underneath and next to each other (completely nested, like the mini-rooms at the beginning). Based on the appearance of the webs, Tomás can even recognise which spider was at work. But in the lab, people not only think and talk about spiders, but also with them: Tomás unpacks tuning forks, each of which imitates the sound of a specific insect when struck. When we carefully touch the spider's web with the tuning fork, the sound reaches the web's inhabitant in the form of a vibration (because spiders don't have ears). The spider thinks that prey has entered the web and takes up the scent straight away.
Jeppe Hein and the art of play
Jeppe's exhibition is very different from the art museum. Here we can reach into boxes, feel objects (chalk!) and smell drops (lemon!). Although there are also pictures on the wall, they are by no means just for looking at: they consist of empty circles in which we draw how we feel at the moment. In 2009, the artist had a burnout and started a watercolour diary in order to regain control of his breathing and find out how he was feeling every day through a spontaneous self-portrait. We do the same now and give the exhibition lots of smiling mouths and huge rows of teeth, but also a few raised and furrowed eyebrows.Jeppe wants to surprise people with his art (and we learn that he loves surprises and prefers to prepare parties in secret). And he wants people to talk to others about his art or about the feelings and ideas it triggers in them. That's why most of his works are displayed in public places, so that as many people as possible can see them, even without going to the museum, and it's also important to Jeppe that people participate in his art. For example, he likes to build benches that have a gap in the centre or look like a loop. He thinks it's good that children use the artworks for skating. In this way, they become part of the city and the lives of its inhabitants. We also think it's great to join in and try it out on a large red street lamp, which is not straight but twisted. One of us even reaches the top. Art can not only be beautiful, but also really fun!
Ana Prvački, the queen bee
Ana always knew that she wanted to become an artist. Her mum is a ceramist and as a child Ana was allowed to knead the dry clay in the bathtub with lots of warm water to bring it back to life. She loved that. At some point, she also started making mini versions of all the ceramic objects her mum had made. That must have looked pretty funny and we learn that humour is still an integral part of Ana's art today. Her father was also an artist and both her parents always encouraged her to play a lot, challenge others and sometimes be a bit cheeky. And that's what art still means to Ana today: she thinks play is especially important for adults and she firmly believes that it's always a good start to solving big problems.Animals and our relationships with them play a big part in Ana's art, for example our relationship with bees. This has also been in the family for a long time - when Ana's great-great-great-great-grandmother married her great-great-great-great-grandfather, she brought a colony of bees into the marriage. Since then, it has been passed down from generation to generation. When Ana's grandfather died, he left her 500 kilos of honey and an old honeycomb, which we were even allowed to touch! Ana didn't become a beekeeper herself, but she does a lot of work on bees in her art. She also tells us that she now feels a bit like a bee herself - the insects love to pollinate as many different plants as possible and Ana is also happiest when she is working on lots of different projects and is always learning new things.
The everyday magic of Karin Sander
We ask Karin about her very first artwork in her large and bright studio. It was created in 1962 (when she was only 5) and her mother even photographed Karin's performance "Counting Water". The black-and-white photos show the young artist concentrating on pouring water from a large bucket with a small jug into a canister and counting, and Karin is still so focussed on her work today and still often devotes herself to everyday things and materials. A framed picture in her studio, for example, shows a plastic bag stapled to a piece of paper (why? because it has a nice colour, quite simply). Karin has made others with various office materials - paper clips, hole-punching confetti, ballpoint pens. Artistic work is always completely free for her, says Karin. In a way, you embark on a journey, experience a lot of beautiful things along the way - and never know beforehand how the journey will end or where it will lead. That's why Karin thinks you should just keep working if you have no ideas, because new ideas will come at some point. All by themselves. And what could be more obvious than dealing (anew) with the things that already surround you? This has a lot to do with appreciation, a keen eye and a keen interest in one's surroundings, and here in Haus Kunst Mitte, Karin has already let her gaze wander and discovered the trail of Tao. Tao was the king poodle of the house founders and touched the wall again and again with his wet fur when climbing the stairs. When we walk through the house now, we are always following in the dog's footsteps - and Karin reminds us of this with her work.
Listening stones and singing dresses with Ayumi Paul
Ayumi has been playing the violin since she was a child, but her concerts are different from those played in large halls in front of large audiences. The concert Ayumi presents to us was played on a former tennis court and her audience consisted of 50 light-coloured, round stones. Ayumi explains to us that stones may not be able to hear music with their ears, but they can feel it: The vibration of the music causes the air to vibrate and inscribes itself into all living beings and objects in the environment. Stones are repositories of many different sounds, places and encounters, because most of them have been in the world for a very long time and have therefore already experienced a lot, but not only stones, other objects also have their very own stories. Ayumi shows us a large and heavy dress made up of countless different pieces of fabric. Ayumi received the fabrics - often pieces of clothing - as gifts from various women, along with a story to go with them, and sewed the dress from them. Ayumi uses the sewn dress as a score, i.e. as a template for a piece of music that brings together many different voices. Ayumi has written a song for each piece of fabric she was given, so that the dress contains an entire concerto. When Ayumi plays the concerto, she wears the score on her own body, even though it is very heavy due to all the fabrics and stories.
Nadine Schemmann's colour feeling
Nadine originally studied design and then worked as an illustrator for fashion magazines and advertising agencies. In the beginning, she mainly worked on the computer and used brushes and colour rather cautiously. She now enjoys creating abstract paintings, which she shows at art exhibitions. Nadine explains that it is sometimes not so easy to get started with a new work. However, as soon as the first drops melt onto the fabric, she often can't stop. That's why she wants to continue making art for a very long time. (At least until she's a grandma!) But what's with all the swirling shapes and flowing colour fields? Nadine tells us that even as a child she saw colours when she met people or listened to music (this special ability, in which different sensory impressions mix, is called synaesthesia). She used to think it was strange and didn't want to talk to anyone about it. Gradually, however, she made friends with this special ability and decided to collect and record her colour impressions. She stretches some of the painted fabrics on stretcher frames, while she attaches others to just one or two points. They then float like ghostly, flowing sculptures on the wall or in the centre of the room and only show a fraction of the painting. The combination of the stretched and sculptural works then creates a whole, she says - because even when we meet, there is always something solid, tense and something that flows and is very soft and relaxed.
On the artist's path of Christian Jankowski
Various photographs and a carpet with mysterious drawings woven into it hang on the walls of Christian's studio. It looks like a treasure map! Christian tells us that there are several of these carpets and that the drawings are directions he has collected on his travels. One carpet, for example, leads to a beach in Mexico. He also got to know the carpet weaver on this trip, which gave him the idea of capturing the sketch in the form of a carpet. "What Christian also finds important in his work is humour. It often helps him to understand and deal with sad or difficult things. But the thing he loves most about art is that you can't make mistakes because - unlike grammar or logic, for example - there is no right or wrong. One subject that Christian particularly enjoys is monuments and statues of famous people or events. Photographs of statues being massaged by people hang in his studio. In another work, he has commissioned a whole team of weightlifters to lift historical monuments in public spaces. Based on the idea of the memorial, we talk about how we would immortalise ourselves, what we are proud of or what we want to be remembered for. We pose outside and capture our poses on Polaroid photos: fishing, kicking a football, painting or rescuing a butterfly in distress. Christian thinks the photos are so great that he photographs them in our hands. And now we hang them on the wall as a work of art!
Ethan Hayes-Chute’s dreams made of wood
Ethan tells us that although he studied painting at the art academy, he was already very fond of wood as a child. He grew up in the USA and his mum always liked to build bookshelves and many other things out of wood. Ethan built his first cabin when he was 18. Since then, he has collected wood that he finds on the street, on building sites or in bulky waste, old furniture or slats. He never buys new wood because he finds it exciting that every piece of used wood has its own history - nails, screws or paint residues often remind him of its former life. Ethan then uses them for his art and continues to write their story in this way, but now we really want to know what is made from the wood - here we see primarily slats that are still waiting to be processed further. The reason for this, explains Ethan, is that most of his artworks would not fit into his studio and often only exist for a certain period of time in a certain place. His and Dafna Maimon's Camp Solong project, for example, is a summer holiday camp that has taken place at four different locations so far. For each of these camps, an open wooden hut is built in which eight people can sleep, cook and eat for three days. The camp – not just the hut, but also the people and what they do during the three days – then becomes a living work of art. Ethan loves humour and absurdity – that is, when things are a bit crazy or outlandish and contradict the "normal" course of things.
Ink, stains, form with Ali Kaaf
Ali grew up in Syria and has lived in Berlin for over 20 years. He prefers to use paper in his art, "because paper is fragile," he says. He paints many spots with a brush and black ink, which together create an abstract form. He even burns holes into some pictures, which then become part of the artwork. Abstract means that you can't recognise any specific figures, faces or things in his paintings. But we still always thought we could see something in them, e.g. a starry sky or a seashore from above or even a hot dog. Ali not only makes pictures, but also sculptures out of glass and shoots short films. For him, the most important aspect of art is to take a risk. For him, free art means trying out something new, even if he doesn't know whether it will turn out well. Ali sees the production process and the many failed attempts as necessary steps on the way to the goal. He tells us a story about this: "Once upon a time there was an emperor in ancient China. He owned a beautiful rooster that he wanted to have painted. So he commissioned a painter. The painter said that he would need a whole year to complete the drawing. After a year, the emperor called him in and asked to see the picture. The painter asked for paper, ink and brushes. Within a few minutes, he painted the cockerel as perfect and beautiful as the real one. But the emperor was furious, why did he have to wait a whole year for this? So the painter took him into his studio. The room was hung with thousands of sketches of the rooster. It was only through these exercises that he was finally able to wield the brush so confidently. For Ali, all attempts are never in vain, but part of his art, which is always evolving.
In the fabric kingdom of Claudia Hill
Many threads come together in Claudia Hill's work: She makes performance art, costume and stage design, experimental film and visual art. And above all, she works with fabric. You can see this in her studio, as there are beautiful, special textiles to be discovered everywhere. Claudia has had a fondness for fabric and textiles for a very long time. In her studio hangs an embroidered picture of a bird that she made when she was 8 years old, in the 2nd grade. Since then, she has been weaving, embroidering, knitting, sewing - and painting pictures with fabric. We want to know: Why fabric, actually?
She tells us that she is always fascinated by how delicate a single thread is and how quickly it can tear and break. But when many individual threads come together and are woven together, they form a solid unit and are very strong. (She also has to think about us humans and how much we can achieve when we join forces). Another special thing about fabric for her is that all people (big and small, rich and poor) have textiles - because fabric is everywhere. Claudia prefers to work with fabrics that have a story, that she receives as a gift and can reuse.
Yorgos Sapountzis and the city as a stage
Yorgos comes from Athens, the cradle of European theatre, which fills him with pride. You can really feel his fascination and love for the theatre! Even as a child he loved art, painted a lot and knew that he would one day become an artist. During his studies, he did an exchange semester at the UdK in Berlin, which he then extended for a further 6 months - and extended again. He has now lived here for twenty years! We ask him whether art that hides something is also created in such a hidden studio (because his is very hidden). Yorgos laughs: "I don't hide anything, I show!" In the middle of the room is a large paper model of an amphitheatre. It is the amphitheatre in Epidauros on the Peloponnese, which is considered to be one of the first theatres in the world. And Yorgos has made a stage set for it. Yorgos tells us that the city is actually like a stage for him and that we, who move around it, are always part of a great performance. For Yorgos, the memory of a city and the encounters with its architecture become the material from which he tells or builds stories. All kinds of things that he encounters in everyday life appear in his performances and installations. Because Yorgos likes to find and track things down, like the life-size plush figure of a dog that stands among his art. A carpenter found it on the street in Münster and it then became part of an installation by Yorgos. Or the Easter egg, which in Greek tradition has been hanging in a corner at the top of the wall for six years now (and has not escaped our attentive eyes).
Ulrich Vogl's "cognitive catalysers"
Ulrich enjoys seeing how objects transform and can suddenly mean something completely different or many different things if you change their size, for example. He then calls the objects "knowledge gaining catalysts". (Catalysts are machines or substances that trigger or accelerate a certain process). Ulrich wants to use his art - through surprise or amazement - to trigger a realisation through which we perceive our environment or perhaps even ourselves a little differently. Of course, this requires good ideas and Ulrich tells us that sometimes, when he thinks he has a particularly good idea, he gets so excited that he has to go to the loo three times. However, after a while he doesn't like some works so much because he can only recognise one specific thing in them instead of many different things, and he finds that rather boring. For example, while camping, he once observed how the sun cast dancing shadows from branches onto the tent wall. He found this spectacle so fascinating that he always wanted to have it with him and recreated it: With the help of a construction made from a mirror, some adhesive tape, branches, light and a fan, he can now cast the shadows on any wall that happens to surround him.
Vlado Velkov's expansions of reality
Vlado prefers to work together with other artists. His artworks are often created in pairs or in a larger group. He has also worked as a curator for a long time. This is the person who plans exhibitions, comes up with concepts, selects artists and invites them to show works on a specific theme or in a specific location. This can happen in a museum or outside, in a public space. Just as unusual as the places Vlado chooses to present the art are often the forms in which the works appear. At Kunst Haus Mitte, we cannot recognise Vlado's artwork with the naked eye. Here, we have to go on a journey of discovery with a smartphone or tablet in front of our noses. And suddenly something happens: colourful leaves are whirled up by the wind. Vlado explains to us that this technology is called AR or augmented reality. This is English and means "augmented reality". In contrast to virtual reality, in which you are completely immersed in a digital world, AR is like a second layer on top of our surroundings and merges with them.