Junges Blut

Young Blood goes into the next round! For the fourth time, the cooperation project with the Kunstschule Wandsbek provides insight into the thinking and work of young people. Inspired by the large special exhibition “Cindy Sherman. Works from the Olbricht Collection”, a group of students has developed their own works with exciting, sometimes very personal approaches. Physicality and sexuality, identity and role models, questions that play a major role in the work of the American artist, formed a fascinating starting point. The result is a series of photographs, large-format text works, and even sculptures and objects that sometimes have a whimsical life of their own.

The goal was to give the communication design students the opportunity to work artistically freely. At the same time, they were able to get to know the necessary design and organizational processes of an exhibition production. They made use of their freedom: The result is a varied exhibition with independent, often surprising perspectives, on what makes us human.

Cindy Sherman’s transformation skills are now part of everyday life for many: 5 clicks, sometimes even less, are enough these days to completely transform a person’s face. In her portrait series, Lara-Marie Witt has symmetrically mirrored, digitally processed, and smoothed the halves of the faces of young women and men. Here, the desire for individuality and attractiveness becomes a virtual distorted image that seems alienating despite all its charms.

Black on white and in impressively large letters, Kayen Eggeling presents various statements that fill an entire wall: YOUR INDEPENDENCE HAS BEEN RESET. YOUR RELATION HAS BEEN SWIPED LEFT. The statements are irritating in their sober clarity, because here everything has already been irrevocably decided – and indeed many people today feel this in more and more areas of life. But are decisions really without alternative? Is there no room for maneuver? Are we really powerless? Kayen Eggeling’s statements do not call for anything, and that is precisely why she encourages resistance.

Henrik Knüppel again shows a motorized object. Provided with individual puppet limbs, it crawls across the exhibition floor in grotesque movements. Sherman’s horror images of mutilated dolls find a peculiar correspondence here. The idea of an innocent childhood is taken ad absurdum. For the carefree, even naive play in early youth is not always free of sadistic explorations, of fantasies of violence and pleasure.

An exhibition with works by Kayen Eggeling, Ayleen Mertins, Alex Gottfried, Hannah Grams, Tabea Gruis, Anika Huhle, Henrik Knüppel, Hannah Lowitz, Isabell Schlüter, Merle Tatoli, Lara-Marie Witt and Kübra Yilmaz.

Documentation: Laura Feldt and Maximilian Gregorius

Project management: Björn Behrens and Gerd Jegelka in close collaboration with the curator of the Weserburg Ingo Clauß