Künstlerräume

In an exciting sequence, the Weserburg presents new artists’ spaces for the fifth time. The artists self-confidently put their works and concepts up for debate. The exhibition thus provides insight into the diversity and quality of artistic production today, which is impressively reflected in the Weserburg’s collections-supplemented by selected loans. It is precisely in the differences, contradictions, and confrontations that come to light in the process that the Weserburg’s artists’ spaces respond to the complexity of today’s experience of the world. Several of the 16 rooms have been specially arranged by the artists for this exhibition. Among them are painting, sculpture, photography, and a video work, as well as cross-media installations, up to and including a room by the Scottish artist Susan Philipsz that is filled only by sounds.

Katja Aufleger’s new video work “Love Affair” can be seen in a completely darkened room. In quiet shots, various lamps gradually light up and are shot in consistent succession. The alternation of tense calm and sudden destruction, of light and darkness, make the work an allusive symbol.

From the Art Collection Telekom come no less than two rooms by Aneta Grzeszykowska and Igor Grubić. Grubić, who lives in Zagreb, shows the photo series “366 Liberation Rituals.” Using the example of various actions in public space, he makes comprehensible how everyday life can be sensitively disturbed and questioned by surprisingly minor interventions and actions. Heroic statues, which he masks with red scarves, for example, point to the possibility of revolt, making clear how easily habitual perceptions can be changed and called into doubt.

But there are also different painterly concepts in the exhibition. Works by Henrik Eiben, Ulrich Erben, Karin Kneffel, Sibylle Springer and Philip Taaffe, which can be contrasted with each other. They impressively demonstrate that painting has hardly lost any of its fascination, despite or even because of all-encompassing digitization. Artists of several generations see in it a contemporary, highly topical means of expression. The positions presented, some of which are entirely new works on public view for the first time, convincingly address aesthetic, media-reflexive, and not least social questions and debates.