Gerd Rohling

The exhibition “Inside – Outside” shows recent works by the artist Gerd Rohling (*1946, Krefeld) from the Böckmann Collection, Berlin, complemented by some works from his studio. The focus is on series of works such as “Immer im Bilde – Rouge” or “Sweet ‘n’ Sour”, which were created over the past five years, and with which the artist presents the range of his artistic language from painting to sculpture to film in a playful use of the simplest materials.

In his works Gerd Rohling always aims at the possibility form of existence: For him, the world is a big picture or a mosaic of an infinite number of images. And he himself, the artist, is always in this picture, moving within it as an actor who bends reality into shape, adds to it, and thus creates another, a new picture, which for moments allows the vanishing point of another world to appear. With the mysterious narrative of his works, he succeeds in bringing central themes of our contemporary existence into view, such as the dominance of media communication and its whispering effect on society’s view of the world, or the increasing fusion of private and public space.

Gerd Rohling is one of the great mavericks of the art of our time. Again and again, the Berlin-based artist is drawn to the world to work on his comprehensive artistic projects in places such as Accra, Naples, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Mumbai, or Liverpool. With his exhibition at the Weserburg, conceived as a complete installation, Gerd Rohling is, in a sense, returning to the harbor of his early youth. For it was here, more precisely in Bremerhaven, that he signed on as a ship’s steward on the “Bremen” in the mid-1960s and was on the move on the world’s oceans for several years until he began his art studies.