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MASTERS KLASSE WAGNER [MUTHESIUS KUNSTHOCHSCHULE KIEL]

LEANDRA BIGALE, MELINA BIGALE, HANNAH BOHNEN, LISA FRIEDRICHS-DACHALE, MARIA GERBAULET, NIKOLA HAUSEN, ANNEMARIE JESSEN, BENEDIKT LÜBCKE, LILIAN NACHTIGALL, ANNE NITZPAN, OSKAR SCHROEDER, LUCAS WINTERHALTER

Exhibition duration
4. February – 9. March 2023

The title of the show orphaned on the highest possible increase of fortefortissimo. Behind the fivefold f, in musical terms, there is not only enormous energy that must be expended in playing, but the utterance of fffff itself requires just that energy.

"Studying sculpture, like making art in general, is about questioning and resonating with the material, the form, the substance, and doing. And it's always about the search. The search does not happen in a straight line, but via aberrations and detours. It is an experiment that first allows everything and connects incompatible things with each other. Art arises in the origin, hits hooks, lets something appear that was not there before. 

And how does the art of the young generation that enters the stage today show itself? With great freedom, materials are chosen, found, used and dropped again, materials that come from completely different, non-artistic or everyday areas, that can be waste or even classic sculpture material. In view of the variety of possibilities, it is important not to drift into arbitrariness, but to search for what is unique in each case - through precise observation, experimental twisting and turning, trial and error. Often it is almost as if the material seeks its own way of working, as if it is then subjected to a process of transformation in the process of making and in the combination with other materials."

Elisabeth Wagner [Spechte am Meisenknödel, 2021]

In her artistic works, Leandra Bigale deals with landscape and garden planning. In the process, the question of the relationship between the will to control nature and the organic life of its own in designed landscapes repeatedly comes into focus. In the work roots follow, plastic packaging determines the sculptural form of the root system. The roots of the sods reshape the indentations and elevations in relief, thus removing them from their original function. The scans thematize an interplay between below and above, between control and free form, between natural and human, between sculpture and painting.

Many of Melina Bigale's works are about the dialogue between people and nature. Her working method consists of fragmenting the natural and recontextualizing it in the exhibition space. The installations, some of which are still alive, change, they perform for the duration of the exhibition. After the exhibition period, she continues to work with the components that have emerged from time. Thus, the series of pine needle drawings emerges from collecting all the needles of a sugarloaf spruce, which had been a part of another installation. By stringing the needles together on glass, they become drawings and find their own form through their curved nature.

The sculptures, surfaces and installations of Hannah Bohnen deal with movement phenomena. Through her works, she attempts to arrest the uncertain, sometimes invisible moments of ephemeral action in forms, using dynamic materials and fluid shapes as vocabularies to communicate the decaying and almost imperceptible life of random gestures. The artistic intervention serves as a reminder of ephemerality, lending permanence to what is otherwise transient. Shapes and materials are in motion, probing the conditions of our perception.

The weave of sugary tendrils explores ornamentation as a means of adornment. The motivation was the question of what distinguishes the sculptural work of Lisa Friedrichs-Dachale from that of a confectioner or pastry chef. Along with this, she was preoccupied with questions about the relevance and recognition of both worlds of life. The processes that Richard Serra describes with the verbs "to roll, to twist, to cut, to mix, to modulate, to disarrange" can be read not only in the handling of the material, but also recall actions in the kitchen. What makes the actions and products of an artist so much more sublime? The sugar and the ornament combine the element of pure pleasure. Moldy corners and growing tendrils break the strictness of symmetry. They detach themselves from the wall, survey the architecture and will disappear again. The amount of work and the delightful beauty contrast with the limited duration of the exhibition. It is about recognizing that every desire is ephemeral.

Important properties of a tarp are resistance to tearing, wind and water. Maria Gerbaulet's disintegrated tarpaulin contradicts these qualities and becomes a vulnerable and ephemeral object. Through patches and layers, the original material has been transformed into a new form, trying to counteract the decay back to dust. Thus, the object oscillates between a process of creation and decay.

Heating, folding, stretching, hanging, lacing, squeezing, cooling. Nikola Hausen's pond liner is removed from its ground-level, functional position and is shifted into a new context by being tied to a column standing in space. When the foil is heated, it can be easily folded and modeled. If it cools down during the working process, it reverts to its rigid, uncooperative state. The oscillation between the two states and their influence on the effect of the material becomes central here.

In the works of Annemarie Jessen usually appear everyday objects that have been transformed in a certain way: This is also the case with the newspaper titled April 29, 2019, in which only gaps refer to the previously contained content. In this way, the focus shifts away from the interchangeable, daily changing news to the unchanging principle that determines their structure within the medium.

The precise observation, disassembly and humorous reconnection of images and moments runs stringently through Benedikt Lübcke's artistic exploration and represents its point of departure. In a niche in the exhibition space stands a stretched ballerina leg, balancing on the tip of its foot. A twisting movement from dance is frozen and captured sculpturally. Strangely and yet gracefully, the leg holds itself upright under its own power. Aplomb formally questions the exhibition space and turns protrusions and niches within the gallery into a stage.

The starting point for the watercolors by Lilian Nachtigall is a photograph by Andreas Gursky ("Paris Montparnasse" from 1993). A watercolor is made for each of the 561 window complexes. The individual watercolors break down this large whole into its individual parts. The individual window is given importance and attention. Thereby one sees a window, which develops a rhythm on the small concentrated surface, which is dependent on form and color. The dissection of the many into the individual includes a time to look, a time to make the watercolor, and a time when one watercolor is drying and the next is already waiting.

A black mass spreads over the table and hands, connecting them together. A space opens up in which the uncanny invades the homely, the irrational spills over into the rational. Anne Nitzpan's photo series Salty Tooth was based on stories told by her grandfather. The artist translated her grandfather's memories of childhood play with his favorite sweet, salmiak pastilles, into sculptural form. This is dished up in the grandparent's dining room and further sculpted with the hands of the artist and her grandparents.

In Oskar Schroeder's work, industrially manufactured mounting rails and small block-like stucco marble objects were installed on the wall. Through the nature of the installation and the functional appearance of the attached parts, the wall as an architectural and supporting element is taken up in terms of content and becomes part of the work. The objects made of stucco marble are the product of an elaborate manufacturing process that produces a marbling effect in the mixing and layering of plaster, bone glue and color pigments, thus creating a material that visually resembles the natural product marble.

Lucas Winterhalter's works revolve around fragments, repetitions, coincidences and associations. The everyday, even the trivial, isolated, exposed, exaggerated, in new contexts, rethought are starting points of artistic practice. These themes find their translation in spatial installations, photography, film and sound. Time, language, text and music often play a special role. He understands sound in particular as a material with which space can be shaped. Through rhythmic settings, the poetry of repetition is made tangible.

Each carpet has an individual pattern. However, the individual carpets are connected by a common basic structure that determines their construction. Lisa Friedrichs-Dachale, Annemarie Jessen and Anne Nitzpan pick apart the patterns of the collected carpets into individual patches. These are embedded in a new order. Previously unified stories become a patchwork - a growing form that searches for new boundaries.