Mir ist das Leben lieber

The exhibition “Mir ist das Leben lieber” (I prefer life) brings together more than 100 paintings, sculptures and video works that explore questions of identity, social role attribution, but also existential areas such as life and death in a very sensual and convincingly provocative way. Highlights and never-before-seen works from the Reydan Weiss Collection will be presented. The collector was born in Istanbul, grew up in Jordan, went to school in Jerusalem and came to Germany as a young woman. The fact that she has access to several cultural circles makes the exhibition an experience that allows one to look far beyond the European horizon to the world. In addition to well-known artists such as Cindy Sherman, Nathalie Djurberg, Bettina Rheims, but also Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer and Robert Longo, the exhibition shows many surprisingly new works, including African, Oceanic, Chinese, Japanese, Latin American and Caribbean positions.

Dealing with and enduring cultural and individual differences, tradition and modernity, is a central theme of the exhibition. Examples of this are the changing photographic identities of Cindy Sherman, the highly disconcerting figures of Charles Fréger, and Mircea Suciu’s figure wrapped in a burka, which appears threatening not only at first glance. But questions such as life and death, beauty and age also resonate convincingly in many of the works shown. Mat Collishaw’s photo series “Last Meal on Death Row” shows composed still lifes that turn out to be “last meals.” Manabu Yamanaka places very old women, scarred by life, in nude photographs, and Andres Serrano’s portrait of the dead is able to provide insight into the normally closed-off realm of pathology. This collection contains many a surprise never before seen in the Northwest.

Also noteworthy is the large body of excellent paintings, some of which are non-representational. If one looks at the pictures, a remarkable cross-section of what is relevant and valid as painting in the 20th and 21st century emerges. Alongside works by Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, but also Jonas Burgert, Norbert Schwontkowski and the Lebanese Etel Adnan, one finds pictures by the Australian painter Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, who is still little known in Europe. His works hang on a par with those of Bernard Frize and Peter Halley and, despite their contextuality and direct connection to Australia’s Aboriginal culture, are able to assert their place alongside many more European-American influenced works. In other words, Tjapaltjarri is not given an “ethnologically” colored special status, but is in this collection an international artist alongside many others whose works are on view here.

Again and again, the question is how the diversity, indeed sometimes exclusivity, of ways of thinking and claims can endure alongside and among each other. Transferred to the sphere of art, this means: whether and in what way a connection between aesthetics and ethics exists and can be experienced in the work of art. It is about learning processes in the context of an international exchange, which are relevant for a broader and younger audience. It is also about the chance to get a different, new view of a world that is partly out of joint, to revise fixed ideas and to gain one’s own standpoint in the world, next to and together with others.

With the kind support of the Waldemar Koch Foundation and the Museum Friends Weserburg. The Weserburg is institutionally supported by the Senator for Culture of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen.