Exhibitions

15 May – 31 August 2024

Ubbo Kügler's works are created from drawings that he creates in association with everyday experience and vision, like a stream of consciousness. Links in these chains of perception and memory can be aggregated into motifs or narrated in wall works and room installations in new associative spaces. The clowns fighting ('Torensenge') are one such motif. For the exhibition at ZiF, Kügler works with this motif, layering and repeating it on canvas and as a spatial installation. Paper or foil are his materials for transferring the drawing into space. The aggression of the gates' movements is transferred into broken and torn surfaces of printed paper.

11 January – 28 March 2024

Where one takes the human factor into account

We often encounter art and science as two distinct and clearly separate spheres. How much sense does this separation make? And does it really exist at all?

With the Renaissance, the world view shifted towards anthropocentrism. Following the example of antiquity, humanism placed the humans at the centre – he became the measure of all things. This development continues to strongly influence us and has an impact on many areas of society, including art and science.

The ZiF cooperation group "Volcanoes, Climate and History", led by Prof Dr Ulf Büntgen (Cambridge University), has been researching the possible effects of volcanic eruptions on climate, environment and society at ZiF since the end of 2021. Archaeologists, historians, climate scientists, palaeoscientists and a volcanologist discuss this in regular workshops together with other experts.

A special feature of the research group is the participation of artist Anna Guðjónsdóttir, who grew up in Iceland and has experienced a close proximity to volcanoes. During the workshops, she repeatedly conducted artistic experiments with the scientists and enriched their perspectives accordingly.

Within the group and in the workshops, curiosity and openness towards different perspectives and approaches always play a central role in the search for new and positive contemporary possibilities for human action.

With the exhibition Curiosity Unbound, the members of the "Volcanoes, Climate and History" group are exploring this boundless curiosity under the artistic direction of Anna Guðjónsdóttir. A dialogue between the fellows becomes visible in which the independent, the personal, meets scientific and artistic thought.

11 October – 22 December 2023

Mit der Ausstellung "Latent Space Agency" des Artist in Residence 2022 Moritz Wehrmann tauchen die Besucher*innen tief in das Konzept des "latenten Raums" ein – ein Raum der Möglichkeiten und Leerstellen, der in eine Dimension jenseits unseres alltäglichen Verständnisses von Logik und Weltzusammenhängen führt. Moritz Wehrmann hinterfragt die Natur von Räumlichkeiten und Dimensionen, sei es in der mathematischen Repräsentation eines hochdimensionalen Raums in KI-Modellen, in den Relationen der verwendeten und thematisierten Medien oder im physischen, sinnlich erfahrbaren Raum. In latenten Räumen, wie in Moritz Wehrmanns Arbeiten, hängt das Unzusammenhängende zusammen und eröffnet neue Perspektiven.

In seinen Werken erkundet Wehrmann diese Sprünge und unerwarteten Zusammenhänge, ermittelt Extreme und lotet Grenzen aus. Im Zuge dieser intuitiven Kartographie wird Unerwartetes und Ungewolltes intentional, verschmelzen Signifikant und Signifikat, werden Übergänge zwischen latenten und physischen Räumen offengelegt und verdeckt. Ähnlich den Werken der Land Art stellen sich Fragen nach Autor*innenschaft und der Zeit und Energie, die diese neuen Bildwelten konsumieren – oft erst auf den zweiten Blick.

Während seines ZiF-Aufenthalts im Sommer 2022 setzte sich Moritz Wehrmann insbesondere mit KI-Modellen der Bild- und Textgenerierung und dem ZiF als Ort der Mannigfaltigkeit auseinander. Als interdisziplinäres Forschungszentrum bietet es nicht nur ein breites Spektrum inhaltlichen Inputs, sondern ist auch ein Ort vielschichtiger kreativer Entfaltung – also selbst ein durch und durch latenter, das heißt möglichkeitsgebender Raum.

Am 11. Oktober 2023 um 19 Uhr findet die Vernissage als Auftakt des Workshops "Operative Images in Algorithmic Environments" des SFB 1288 (Teilprojekt E05 "Mediale Dispositive des Vergleichens: Das operative Bild nach Harun Farocki") im Foyer des ZiF statt. Der Eintritt ist kostenlos.

August 2023 – 2025

Sebastian Freytag works with temporary and permanent murals in public spaces. In recent years, he has created permanent murals, among others, for the new building of the tax office in Herne in 2011 and for the municipal hospital (Södersjukhuset) in Stockholm in 2017. He was asked to create a concept for ZiF's concrete walls leading up to the main entrance and developed "Rauschen".

The path to ZiF, which is situated on a hillside, is structured over several levels / 'terraces'. The entrance is reached via a serpentine road for cars and bicycles and a staircase for pedestrians. The paths are bordered by various walls, some of which are very low, but then rise again to form high walls. These concrete walls were designed by Sebastian Freytag with the murals "Rauschen" (noise).

"Rauschen" consists of letters painted directly onto the walls. The letters condense in some places and 'evaporate' along the length of the walls. The letters can be read as sounds that evoke a kind of noise. S-sounds or F-sounds can be read as noise, snoring or whistling sounds, as known from comics. The noise can be related both to the geographical location on the outskirts of the city, where the city sounds can still be heard, and to the forest, which becomes more visible and audible as the terrain rises. ZiF as a place of thought, discourse and essentially as a place of the spoken and written word is addressed in the artistic work: however, not language as a completed sentence, as a clear thought, but rather as a preform or after echo, a murmur in the speech centre.

Freytag has exhibited at numerous institutions in Germany and abroad such as: Museum Folkwang (2008), ZKM / Museum Neue Kunst (2008), Kunstsammlung der Ruhr-Universität Bochum (2009), RMIT Gallery, Melbourne (2009), Sydney College of the Arts (2009), Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2010), Wilhelm-Hack Museum (2011), Museum van Bommel van Dam, Venlo (2012), 2015 at the 15th Kaunas Biennale, 2016 at Gdánska Galeria Miejska in Gdansk.

22 September – 13 December 2022

Christine Erhard's photographic works refer to images in their already mediated, medial form. For the exhibition at ZiF, she has mostly worked on historical images of brutalist buildings. These photographic documents, which, like the ZiF, were created in the 1970s and 80s, become models for sculptural constructions in Erhard's studio. These constructions are in turn photographed, so that different levels of reflection and reality overlap in Erhard's images.

Christine Erhard develops her works out of a sculptural process; the pictorial object is conceived and built by her. In complex relationships between spatial constellations created solely for the camera view, she is looking for procedures to bring together different levels of reality that determine perception.

She is interested in the complex relationship between the image of an architectural space and the three-dimensional physical space itself. To this end, she develops systems of image organisation that do not correspond exclusively to the traditional forms of representation in photography.

01 March – 30 June

From early March, a mural by the Berlin artist Friederike Feldmann will be on view at the ZiF. With her work, Friederike Feldmann is on an exploration of the borderlands between painting and drawing; time and again, she expands the image into an experience of space. The line has always played an important role in her work, and the examination of colour is often literally inscribed in the texture of the paintings.

The painting developed for the upper foyer of the ZiF is inspired by impressions that Friederike Feldmann gathered during her stay at the ZiF from March to June 2021. During this time, Feldmann was intensively occupied with the architecture of the ZiF, which dates back to the early 1970s and can be assigned stylistically to the era of Brutalism. The representatives of this style believed that modern industrialised societies needed art that was as powerful as possible. They should experience a "spiritual liberation, be made to see, and experience sensuality instead of commerce". This is also expressed in the underlying French word "brut" in that it means not only "raw" but also "rough", "coarse", " harsh" or "honest".

29 September 2021 – 14 January 2022

Anna Guðjónsdóttir is an Icelander who spent her childhood playing in a lava fissure 50 meters deep and several kilometers long. The bizarre solidification vortices of the lava resemble baroque pictorial patterns, and the seemingly endless natural space resembles magnificent sacred buildings. But this reference could only be seen in retrospect with a different cultural approach - that aesthetic path via art to reality: So only the scientific distance and education at, in and through art enables a new view of the world.
Anna Guðjónsdóttir's exhibitions do not simply show pictures, she often turns the entire available space into a walk-in picture.

A special and repeatedly taken up element are showcase cabinets: painted, filled or seemingly in front of the paintings. The showcase as a basic element of education and musealisation, of private collecting of important and precious things. And so it refers to the always present pre-information, to the already mentioned fundamental medialisation of the gaze.

29 January – 24 April

Sinta Werner has developed two groups of works for the solo exhibition at ZiF. The series Dialectic of Frames consists of b/w photographs that reinterpret constructions of space in the surface through folds, cuts in the paper, and threads. Recurring motifs are frame structures of windows and facades as well as grids of grids and floor plates. Projections of sunlight or reflections in glass and water create images that are elaborated by sewing thread, cut-out shapes or folds. This is reminiscent of illustrations from descriptive geometry, such as those used to illustrate central perspective. However, instead of resolving facts logically and analytically, as in science, new interpretations of impossible spaces are created here that appeal to our imagination.

In the second series, Reverse Cut, slides are laminated behind glass. The image motifs – the airport in Moscow, a container landscape in front of the Hong Kong skyline – have the appearance of a toy landscape. They are broken up into vertical stripes that echo the structural division of the façade or cityscape. The work changes through the movement of the viewer in space and the respective viewing angle. Superimpositions, condensations and displacements as well as projections on the wall are created. This gives the pictorial object a dynamic that contrasts with the static monumentality of the buildings and makes the fragmented pictorial elements appear as cinematic sequences.

31 July

Nicole Schuck printed three hoist flags with drawings of animals of the Teutoburg Forest - mouse weasel, fire salamander, eagle owl for her exhibition at ZiF. Like an appeal, they mark that certain wild animals are, were and should be at home in this region. They give them a presence and stress their status as part of our common habitat, which we care for. Depending on the strength of the wind, the three motifs unfold or disappear into the fabric hanging motionless. The animals thus 'escape' from time to time, similar to what can be observed in the wild – a rising and falling. The flags are exposed to the climatic conditions day and night. They inscribe themselves into the fabric, it will fray over time and the colours will change: an allegory of the ecosystem, which is permanently subject to both positive and negative influences that show their effects in the long term.

6 October – 18 December

Silke Brösskamp chooses her media according to the respective projects. They are often fragments of architectural details that she takes up, reinterprets and reinterprets through her expansive sculptures. For her, a space is a container, a playing field, a time reservoir. With a view to its atmosphere, its formal peculiarities, its functionality, she develops her spatial sculptures. Then the place becomes the stage she occupies, its material as well as metaphysical characters become silent extras.

For her project at ZiF, she developed a work that shows the 70s architecture
outside and the view through the wall-including glass fronts into the natural world.
In this way, she combines elements of architecture ("culture") with the narrative of "nature".
This is a dialogue that is also repeatedly conducted in research.

22 September – 20 December

Looking over the path of the painter from Herford, it did not lead him to the sunny meadows of Tarascon. Weizenfeld's path seems rather to have been marked by malaise and displeasure. Elysian landscapes in his oeuvre mostly serve the need to catch his breath. He finds it difficult to detach himself from the social functions of art.

With the exhibition "Neue Befunde", Weizenfeld shows how closely his works are related to the questions of science at ZiF. In "Netzwerke" he has imagined and entangled himself. Where will these phenomenal entities lead us?

"Abwicklungen" imply a final process. Who or what is being wound up there? Is it an organ, a cadaver, a landscape? In his works, Weizenfeld plays with the interaction of subject and title.

The installations he shows at ZiF not only pose questions, but also offer help: for example, the tools in "Grundreinigung" or the seating offer in the ensemble "Stuhlkreis".

"Neue Befunde" is a term from the medical field. Findings can be positive but also negative. "Neue Befunde" is a painting and installation by Weizenfeld, which, with the exception of one work, was created explicitly for ZiF.

26 June – 6 September

Stephanie Senge is the only consumption artist in the world. In many of her works and actions, she is always concerned with making us consumers aware of what we do when we shop. "Shopping" has long been a very central and complex issue in our affluent society.

Stephanie Senge has been shopping professionally in supermarkets all over the world for over 25 years. She has a large collection of products in her Berlin studio, which she will show for the first time at ZiF, as well as presenting the idea of the strong consumer.

For this purpose, there will be a sculpture "the strong consumer", which is based on the aesthetics of the suffragettes (women's movement).

5 March – 31 May

Interview with Tilo Schulz on his exhibited works at ZiF

Herr Schulz, was hat es mit den 61 Ausstellungen auf sich?

Ich habe eine Arbeit mitgebracht, sie heißt 'im Flug. flüchtig (Partitur)' und besteht aus 18 Platten, die auf der einen Seite Malerei zeigen und auf der anderen Seite Text. Diese Arbeit verändert sich täglich, indem ich die Platten neu staple, stelle, anlehne, umkippe, zusammenführe, auseinanderziehe und damit auch im Foyer immer wieder neue Räume schaffe, Wege verstelle, Wege öffne. So entsteht jeden Tag, den ich hier arbeite, ein ganz neuer Raumeindruck, eine neue Ausstellung. Außerdem arbeite ich an einem neuen Zeichnungsblock.

Was erwarten Sie von Ihrer Zeit am ZiF?

Erst einmal ist es ganz wunderbar, mit der eigenen Arbeit experimentieren zu können. Diese Möglichkeit hat man als Künstler fast nie: Die Arbeit entsteht im Atelier und geht dann in eine Ausstellung, oder sie entsteht vor Ort in einem Museum, einem Kunstverein, und da ist man dann als Künstler auch nur selten vor Ort. Hier kann ich jeden Tag mit der Arbeit leben und umgehen, und schon jetzt, nach anderthalb Wochen, verstehe ich meine Arbeit besser. Das ist ein großes Privileg.
In den Gesprächen mit den Forschern am ZiF hat sich schon gezeigt, dass es viele inhaltliche Überschneidungen gibt. Die aktuelle Forschungsgruppe fragt nach der kulturellen Produktivität von Schuld, und ich habe viel zu existentiellen Fragen gearbeitet: Aufbrechen und Verschließen, Zeigen und Verbergen, Erinnern und Vergessen. Und auch das Thema 'Reinheit', das gerade in der Forschungsgruppe diskutiert wird, bietet Anknüpfungspunkte: Das Material, das ich für diese Platten verwende, ist für Toilettenverkleidungen entwickelt worden, Bakterien können da nicht eindringen, sie können sich maximal auf der Oberfläche aufhalten. Das ist eine ganz andere Verbindung als bei einer Leinwand, wo die Farbe in das Material eindringt. Und wir werden sicher noch Anknüpfungspunkte finden, die nicht so offen zutage liegen.

Was treibt Sie als Künstler an?

Erkenntnis. Jedes Kunstwerk, das ich mache, ist immer auch ein Versuch, ein Ausprobieren und ein Schritt zur Erkenntnis. Ich hatte nie den Anspruch, das perfekte Bild, die perfekte Skulptur zu schaffen, sondern sehe meine Arbeit immer als Schritt auf einem Weg. Kunst ist für mich ein andauerndes Studium. Oder ein Gespräch: Man spricht so lange, bis man sich annähert und sich versteht.
Es gibt eine lange Zeit, in der sich die Teile eines Kunstwerks miteinander bewegen. Und dann gibt es den Moment, den ich als 'Scharfstellen' beschreibe, in dem auf einmal alles ineinandergreift. Das kann Sekunden dauern oder 15 Jahre. Und dann weiß man als Künstler: jetzt ist es fertig – und es ist gut so.

10 October 2018 – 30 January 2019

Licht ins Dunkel bringen ist einfacher als Dunkel ins Licht bringen. Die Erkenntnisgrenze formt sich im hierarchielosen Spiel beider Vorgänge. Es ist die Arbeit sowohl mit den Aufbau- als auch den Zerfallsenergien von Bedeutungen; und es ist die Bewegung an den Kanten des Fassbaren, ohne Bevorzugung eines Diesseits oder Jenseits. – Der Wackelkontakt zwischen Sprache und Materie. Wann ist etwas und wie bekommt es Bedeutung? Wie berühren sich Situation, Bild und Sprache? Wie sieht eine Erkenntnis aus, die zwischen Material, Bild und Sprache winkt und nicht weiter extrahierbar ist?

3 May – 31 August

With this exhibition Suscha Korte consciously takes position against the alleged anachronism of painting. And shows that the genre is more relevant than ever?

What significance does classical painting have in the Digital Age? In how far can it hold its ground against highspeed internet and the concomitant inflationary, at times manipulative flood of pictures generated by the new media?

The artist explores these and other questions. In doing so she reveals the diversity of painting by quite different techniques – professing herself to the analogue world - as a reference, continuous in values and time, to human existence and to the creative process.

There have always been breaks, caesuras and revolutions; but hardly any invention has accelerated, agitated and hystericised the pulsing of the world in quite the same way as digitalisation has. Our brains, our thought structures and our basic needs, however, are still on the level of Stone Age men, i.e. determined evolutionarily and genetically. Suscha Korte's intensely narrative and complex pictorial universe deals with this unswervingly valid form of human existence, in which encounters, experiences and memories as well as fears, hopes and dreams define our needs. In which a deep dialogue between work and spectator unfolds, leaving space for contemplation and reflection. Not the sensation, the affect, the consumption of the picture as an instance of needs-creating.

The exhibition is an hommage to the analogue, the real life, implying physical presence, direct confrontation and immediate dialogue. At the same time, the exhibition title is meant as an appeal to courage, confidence and an active contention with phenomena and problems of our time. In this context painting serves as a medium of contemplation and new departure. And provides a sustainable argument against passivity, external determination and dystopian resignation – a "still..."

Suscha Korte's portraits tell about being human and about the life traces left by everybody. The large-sized works, often designed as diptychs or triptychs, do not show an effigy of "the human", but dwell on entity by means of everyday objects such as plates, records or household items arranged in a seemingly random manner. The motives thus function as a playground of associations for the individual (hi)story and the human fate behind it, as projected areas for their wishes, dreams and hopes, fears and worries. This way they develop a narrative power demanding from spectators to reflect their own (hi)stories and to unleash both an inner monologue and a dialogue with other spectators. The artist contrasts true-to-life and highly detailed motive portraits with neon-typographies – in a vein ranging from ironic to sardonic – advertising promises such as "happiness" or "home" and once more revealing life's dialectics and contradictions. Despite raising the juxtaposition of pole and antipole, of utopia and dystopia, of structure and chaos Suscha Korte's work is characterised by a deep confidence, basic trust and subtle humour – and thus focusses, along with philosophical magnetism, on the power of affirmation.

Suscha Korte studied Art and Painting at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design and at the Glasgow School of Art (GBR). Her works were exhibited, among others, at Museumsberg Flensburg and in international galeries and form part of numerous private collections in Europe. She lives and works in Cologne.

Yorka Schmidt-Junker

2 July – 24 July

Immer wieder gelangen Kunstwerke in den Fokus der Aufmerksamkeit, wenn sie mit provozierenden Inhalten kontroverse Diskussionen entfachen. Die Fragen, ob Kunst 'alles' darf oder nicht, wo die Grenzen des Erlaubten sind, und wie weit ein Künstler sich im Namen der Kunstfreiheit entfalten kann, wenn er beleidigt, schockiert oder Tiere tötet, können nur schwer beantwortet werden: Kann sich ein nackter Stadionflitzer auf die Kunstfreiheit berufen? Stellt das Beschmieren der Kopenhagener Meerjungfrau mit abwaschbarer Farbe eine Sachbeschädigung dar? Oder handelt es sich bei dem in Wort und Bild wiedergegebenen Ende von Max und Moritz in einer Getreidemühle um eine verbotene Gewaltdarstellung?

Spannende Fragen, mit denen sich seit einigen Jahren Prof. Dr. Dr. Uwe Scheffler mit seinem Lehrstuhl im Rahmen des Forschungsprojektes Kunst und Strafrecht beschäftigt.

Der Lehrstuhl hat zu der Thematik eine Ausstellung erarbeitet. Auf 11 Tafeln werden 20 bebilderte Fälle kommentiert, die zum Nachdenken anregen und Kunst in der Rolle als 'Täterin' (z. B. bei einer beleidigenden Karikatur oder einer tierquälerischen Performance), als auch in der Rolle als 'Opfer' (z.B. bei der Beschädigung, Fälschung oder Wegnahme von Kunstwerken) darstellen.

Bisher wurde die Ausstellung Kunst und Strafrecht an zahlreichen Universitäten in Deutschland, Österreich und der Türkei sowie – in einer polnischen Fassung – an diversen polnischen Hochschulen gezeigt.

26 January – 27 April

"Trophies" are a group of five superhuman-sized plaster sculptures, seemingly randomly distributed in the ZiF foyer. The monochrome demolition columns look like strange, unstable creatures. They thematise the aestheticisation and appropriation of the power of social and spiritual renewal.

10 September – 15 December

Robert Stark pursues a concept of sculpture that is supported by a very architectural understanding. The investigation of the function of architecture, its role in various social, political and economic systems, in history and the present, and its formal and structural manifestations form the focus of his working approach.

The sculptor artistically examines broad fields of the entire history of architecture for their overlaps, differentiations and commonalities. Correspondences and cross-connections to strategies and approaches as well as to forms and structures of architecture and fine arts, but also of design, literature, music, science and the observed environment characterise the process of creation.

Individual investigations focus on thematic fields such as proportions, horizontal and vertical emphasis, aesthetics, compactness and openness, mass, series, combinatorics, simplicity, emptiness, power, protection, light etc. The forms and structures distilled from these multi-layered explorations interlock in complex, montage-like processes, creating abstract compositions of simple, pure form that carry the various levels within them. In this way, an overall constellation of architectural sculptures, spatial installations, drawings and photographic works is created.

Referring to the spatial conditions and special features of ZiF, Robert Stark will show architectural sculptures and excerpts from a current photo series in the exhibition Große Treppe.

10 May – 18 August

Die Oberfläche unseres Planeten hat sich durch unser Tun unwiederbringlich verändert, die Folgen des menschlichen Handelns sind allgegenwärtig spürbar. In unserem Alltag bewegen wir uns nahezu ausnahmslos auf vorgefertigten Wegen und in menschlich gestalteten Räumen, wodurch sich unser Verständnis des Naturbegriffs verändert. Das Internet und die zunehmende Digitalisierung öffnen eine weitere Ebene menschlich geschaffener Räume. Die Kommunikation in der Virtualität und die Bewegung auf gestalteten Routen beeinflussen unsere sinnlichen Erfahrungen und Wahrnehmungen. Die Grenzen zwischen künstlich Geschaffenem und natürlich Entstandenem lösen sich auf und verlieren an Bedeutung. Es entstehen neue Formen der Kommunikation und Bewegung.
Ohne eine Bewertung vorzunehmen, leistet transmit receive einen künstlerischen Beitrag zur Auseinandersetzung mit den Auswirkungen dieser Entwicklungen. Ausgehend von den Begriffen Komplexität, Eleganz und Verbundenheit beschäftigt sich die Ausstellung mit dem Verhältnis des Menschen zur Natur. In den Arbeiten geht die Künstlerin Stefanie Schwedes den Fragen nach, wie der Mensch die Welt um sich herum erschließt, wahrnimmt, sich selbst darin wiederfindet und was passiert, wenn geschaffene Strukturen verschwinden.
Die Ausstellung ist vom 10. Mai bis 18. August 2017 im ZiF zu sehen. Drinnen wie draußen ausgestellt schaffen die direkt vor Ort entstandenen Werke eine Verbindung zwischen Innen, Außen und der sie umgebenden Natur.

5 March – 28 April

In dieser Gemeinschaftsausstellung des Künstlerhauses Lydda in Bethel werden die unterschiedlichsten künstlerischen Positionen sichtbar. Seit 1969 werden hier Kunstwerke geschaffen, gesammelt und ausgestellt. Das Künstlerhaus versteht sich als Akademie der Begegnung, in der der Mensch als bildender Künstler im Mittelpunkt steht. Die Freiheit des künstlerischen Ausdrucks jedes Einzelnen ist Basis und Ziel der Arbeit in Lydda.

Derzeit sind ca. 70 Künstler*innen in den Ateliers sowie in Projekten der Künstlerhauses Lydda aktiv. Zentral ist die künstlerische Qualität der Werke, die auch weltweit ausgestellt werden.

4 December 2016 – 24 February 2017

Im ZiF zeigt Kathrin Graf unter dem Titel "layers" Werke aus ihrer aktuellen Produktion.
Die Installation aus verschiedenen Objekten und Materialien gibt einen Einblick, wie die Künstlerin vorhandenes Bildmaterial durch Transformieren, Überlagern und Re-Kontextualisieren experimentell zur Bildfindung nutzt.

11 September – 25 November

Die Objekte von Constanze Vogt sind Materialtransformationen. Ihr künstlerisches Verfahren ist medienreflexiv. Sie verwandelt Papier mit einer Nähmaschine in etwas Stoffgleiches. Webt einen Teppich aus Heftstreifen. Überträgt das Schnittmuster einer Jacke in körpergroße Linoldrucke. In konzentrierten, zeitlich extensiven und monotonen Arbeitsprozessen werden Übergangsphänomene sichtbar, die die Künstlerin selbst mit Übersetzungen vergleicht. So zerstanzt sie meterweise Papier, bis es sich in ein gardinenhaftes Objekt verwandelt. Von beiden Seiten sichtbar, kann es umschritten werden wie etwas Skulpturales, das Licht einfängt. Als verdichtete Setzung im Raum erzeugt es einen Hauch von Körperlichkeit, der sich in der Durchsicht sogleich wieder transformiert. Bis an die Grenze des Unsichtbaren. Zeitlich parallel dazu entsteht im Atelier der Künstlerin eine Art künstlerisches Protokoll. Darin versucht Constanze Vogt Möglichkeiten poetischer Verfahren zwischen Text und Bild auszuloten. Hier werden Denkprozesse festgehalten, die sich entlang den materialen und medialen Verwandlungen entfalten, verdichten, auflösen und transformieren.

1 – 31 August

Although the women who appear in Anna Konik's moving and provocative video "In the Same City, Under the Same Sky..." reside in the same physical space as the women whose stories they recount, they inhabit profoundly different social spaces. Borders – constructed and reinforced by nationality, race, and language – create barriers to belonging, meaning and empathy and call into being the Other – the refugee, the migrant, the illegal, the unwanted. In Konik's monumental work, thirty-five women in Stockholm, Nantes, Istanbul, Bucharest, and Bialystok recount the life stories of thirty-five women from Afphanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Kurdistan, Nigeria, Palestine, Romania, Somalia, Syria, and Turkey who have fled war, discrimination, or poverty to forge a new life. The voices and images in the videos confront us with critical questions: "Who counts as human? Whose lives count as lives? What makes a grievable life?" (Judith Butler, Precarious Life, 2004).

Excerpt from a text by Judy Fudge in: In the Same City, Under the Same Sky..., Anna Konik (ed.), CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 2015, 9f.

In the same city, under the same sky: so the title of a video installation by artist Anna Konik, devoted to the situation of female migrants in various European countries. Her work has already been exhibited in a number of museums for contemporary art, and also in the Swedish parliament. It will be Anna Konik's contribution to the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia on Human Dignity, organised by ZiF in cooperation with the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS/Jerusalem). The first phase took place in Jerusalem in March bringing together 19 postdoctoral scholars from a variety of countries and disciplines under the academic guidance of Ulrike Davy (Bielefeld) and Michal Linial (Jerusalem).

4 February – 22 April

Der Berliner Künstler Rolf Fässer zeigt in seinen Bildern vertraute Dinge, Landschafts- oder Architekturfragmente, die aus einem subtilen Farbgeschehen heraus entwickelt werden. So entsteht der Eindruck, sie würden sich im Wechsel von Verdichtung und Auflösung selbst bilden. Farbe greift über den Gegenstand hinaus, entfaltet sich frei oder setzt Akzente, die Nahes und Fernes zurück an die Fläche binden. Der atmosphärisch offene, dann wieder geschlossene malerische Raum birgt neben bewegten Linien und markanten Formen das wiedererkennbare Objekt, das in einer zwischen Prägnanz und Unschärfe changierenden Erscheinungsart belebt und in der Erinnerung neu verankert wird.

14 December

Zahlreiche Formen der Gegenwartskultur zeigen eine Aufhebung von früher weit distanzierten Sphären wie Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit, Natur und Kultur sowie Bild und Körper. In vielen Bereichen, und so auch und vor allem in den Naturwissenschaften, werden Bilder nicht nur als conditio sine qua non von Erkenntnis eingesetzt, sondern mit dem zu untersuchenden Gegenstand verwoben. Wenn aber die Bildwerdung der Natur und die Organwerdung des Bildes geprobt werden, und wenn dieser Vorgang als Zeichen einer umfassenden Transmutation aufzufassen ist, dann sind die Ziele nicht weit entfernt von denen des historischen Manierismus, jener Stilform, die um 1600 alle Grenzen zu überspielen suchte. Dieser Vermutung wird der Vortrag nachgehen.

8 November 2015 – 29 January 2016

The object "proof of principle" was created in cooperation with different researchers and focuses on expert-lay-communication. Marion Denis observes forms of knowledge transfer and communication strategies based on text-picture constellations. The multi-discipline research projects will be made comprehensible through curves, graphs and symbols and, at the same time, they imply the question as to mode and reception possibilities.

14 June – 25 September

The focus of Rolf Wicker's work is on room-specific installations, almost always designed and manufactured for a specific place, quite often directly on-site.

Indoors and outdoors of ZiF, installative situations are created by using the relevant wood constructions linked with tension belts and/or clamps which are held together autonomously by pressure and traction, at the same time, however, they may suggest associations with construction and restructuring measures through the fact that they are related to architecture and materiality.

The installations are supplemented by watercolours, prints and drawings.

8 March – 22 May

Four years have passed since the nuclear accident of Fukushima happened on March 11, 2011. In spite of enormous global and political relevancy, this has faded from the spotlight although – right after the accident – there was comprehensive media coverage.

16 artists from Japan, South Korea, Brasil and Germany are going to put the subject again in the center of attention by realising it from the artistic angle, to be exhibited at ZiF as of March 8.

Professor Christoph Rust (University of Applied Sciences, Bielefeld), the curator of the exhibition, is not concerned with the event in itself, he rather intends to draw attention to the individual and social consequences, to subtle social and cultural processes of change, on topics such as mortality, oblivion and suppression. The artists Klaus-Dieter Brunotte, Alex Cerveny, Frank Fuhrmann, Chieko Fumikura-Fuhrmann, Jürgen Heinrich, Helmut Hennig, Atsuo Hukuda, Wolfgang Jeske, Satoshi Ogawa, Christoph Rust, Ute Seifert, Masakazu Sugita, Takashi Suzuki, Shintaro Yanagida, Kwanho Yuh and Michael Zwingmann were asked to deal with the task by means of the disciplines painting, sculpture, installation and video and formulate their individual forms of expression.

With this exhibition, the artists would like to set off a spark in order to bring together people on this subject in order to accept jointly social responsibility and make the subject accessible to a broader public.

5 December 2014 – 27 February 2015

The plasticity of Diana Sprenger's works is born in the depth of the space which is not only 'space' but also produces – intrinsically – 'space' that does not offer us any of those spacially-oriented reference points we are familiar with. This kind of 'depth' is not deceptive since our vision – familiar with seeing in three dimensions and seeking common sights – comes upon the depth of a kind of space that can only be filled by individual and original seeing.
If you have become acquainted with Diana Sprenger's works, you observe that a broad range of colours is reflected. They change their nature depending on the way light falls. If observers change their perspectives, the shades of colours change entirely.
Our seeing resembles a journey in the course of which it captures all impressions which grow stronger to become an experience that we associate permanently with the image; by means of which we also recognise it and – which is probably one of the mysteries of art – we, ourselves, constitute something entirely new.

17 November – 28 November

Als "Artist in Residence" im ZiF nutzte Harald Priem im November 2014 leerstehende, zur Kernsanierung freigegebene Büroräume der Etage B4 der Universität Bielefeld für seine künstlerische Arbeit. Im Gegensatz zur Werkgruppe "Briefe an Jim" beschäftigt sich der Künstler hier mit ortsspezifischen Bodenspuren, die sich über viele Jahrzehnte in das Linoleum eingeschrieben haben.
Der Abdruck ausgewählter Flächen auf großformatige Rollenpapiere transformiert die Alltagsspuren in ungegenständliche, kosmische Bildräume.
Die ehemaligen Büros verwandelten sich in temporäre Ateliers und Ausstellungsorte.

7 September – 28 November

Sometimes, places are associated with memories, as if a touch of our thoughts and hopes sticked to things, as if memories, ever so slightly tangible, needed a place where to visit them. Traces of this transitoriness can be found in the "Letters to Jim". Harald Priem leaves his tracks, sets examples.
An artist is never detached from the circumstances accompanying the creation of his or her piece of art. Priem's "Letters to Jim" are basically works on paper, large-format ink drawings, landscapes of easily flowing ink, applied with pens, brushes and objects found somewhere but unrelated to art. Drawing " an activity he trusts " is the source of his oeuvre. The "Letters to Jim" are created at "dead" places. He calls them "un-places" and declares them to be temporary ateliers. Things he happens to find there are conceptual starting points of the transcriptions. The production process is complex and slow: as a form, letters are profoundly anachronistic. It is an anonymous ductus to put objects previously dipped in ink on long, absorbent sheets of paper. The black of the ink absorbs and disperses the light; mass, density and volume of the drawing stand out. Priem's black is perceived in terms of substance. In a serial order, the forms congeal to abstract signs and sketch a fascinating grid of references on bright paper.

Ricarda Geib, Art Historian, Stuttgart, Juli 2013

6 April – 11 July

The Mönchengladbach-based sculptor Wolfgang Hahn exhibits in Bielefeld for the second time, in 2005 he had shown a selection of his works at a'rtists unlimited'. The spacious facilities at the ZiF allow him to present large-sized sculptures, frequently consisting of several parts. These 'elements', created in the course of the last years, are characterized by right angles, they are wooden blocks, to be systematically or randomly arranged anew, which – due to their being reduced to the simplest mathematical principles – open up numerous new possibilities.

9 January – 26 March 2014

Sandra Boeschenstein is particularly interested in system margins and twilight zones, areas that turn the logic of human brainwork silently and permanently upside down. Her drawings show worlds in which everything seems well-arranged, even so nothing is clearer, or rather, which ask how to give shape to something so complex and heterogeneous as the perception of reality.
The drawings are – above all – active approaches to facing directly a complex perception of the world and developing alternatives to a static 'concept of sense', for – according to the artist – intuition, an atmosphere, a situation cannot be reduced to 'sense'.
Sandra Boeschenstein's drawings open intellectual spaces, they create opportunities for thinking and interpretation that are filled in by the observer with reality, visual experiences and expectations in terms of content – without reaching a reliable solution.

Magdalena Holzhey (abstract)
Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

30 October – 20 December

Ariane Weidemann's art thematises the relation of space, time and movement.
The abstract paintings, drawings, photographs and text images by the Schwerin-born artist are based on the principle of overpaintings and collages. The abstract pictorial worlds – predominantly in black and white – consist of several layers of oil, varnish or graphite on paper, carton and wood, applied on top of each other. Media and material are combined, photographs are painted over and pasted over for several times. The pictures present an interplay between abstraction and representationalism. In some of her works she uses existing objects in the tradition of the objet trouvé so that the pictures go over into the three-dimensional space. Other works are rather related to constructivism – subjected to a principle of form and composition.

10 July – 25 October 2013

Nicole Schuck

In her works, focussing on the medium of drawings and on narrating performances, Nicole Schuck brings art and science, fiction and reality, documentation and narration in contact. She maps places, landscapes, countries – directly integrating the wild animals living there. She does fieldwork that is intended to be narrative, it is not to document or illustrate: she makes drawings, interviews local residents and cooperates with researchers. Fictional aspects are intertwined with actual experiences. Reality is reflected in a realistic reproduction of structures and anatomies: fiction is reflected in the choice of the fragment and the consolidation of animal and topographic elements. At the same time, questions regarding the conservation of nature, species and climate are considered when developing the relevant natural environments; her artistic work, however, is never moralizing. The cycles – graphically narrating – rather lead the observer to an individual organism of nature-, human- and animal worlds.

Artist's website

Beat Brogle

In Brogle's work he deals with morphological processes and associations at the edge of perception.The work is formulated through different media, such as drawings, spatial installation, film/video, interactive installations and web projects.

Artist's website

During the several months of their residency at ZiF, Beat Brogle and Nicole Schuck (visual artists from Berlin and Basel) will have a focus on seeing/perception/attention in arts and science. These three fields form the basis of artwork. By means of visual realisation of issues, considerations and processes, artists deliberately create extended space for attention. In the context of their work, they use terms such as 'attention' and 'seeing' intuitively and with the greatest of ease. At the moment of reflection a theoretical field presents itself. Both artists are interested in the interaction between artistic and scientific approaches.

7 April – 28 June

The exhibition offers an insight into the work of the Munich artist Sophie Johanna Kaiser, who commutes between France and Germany. She picks up themes from both countries in her work, but it is always nature, not civilization, that interests her: for instance, how delicate petal shapes alternate with abstract, multi-layered color blocks on a monochromatic background. Only occasionally does the artist create a sense of space; even then, the outlines blur into organic-looking forms. The transparency of color is of crucial importance in her working process. Kaiser frequently experiments with color and open-ended forms, lines, and dashes, as well as matter and abstraction. This diversity characterizes her work, 35 examples of which are exhibited in Bielefeld.

The drawings, which the artist created in several sequences in 2012 and this year, thematize the reflection of light as filtered and refracted through the studio window. Kaiser sketched these drawings with charcoal, chalk and pencil. Sometimes she follows the movements of wandering shadows, blurred transitions between shapes, and the distortions of objects in the light: a bouquet of wild buttercups or a chair is focused here and removed there, here set in sharp contrast against a light background and there blurry, thickly interwoven into the darkness. The individual shapes become independent and form organic patterns.

In works on canvas the artist varies the themes of light and shadow with the help of color: on a layer of China paper that allows the diffusal of the acrylic paint, she captures shadows on a wall that is not white, but rather striped; this way she pictures the mood of an afternoon in the South. The twilight in the dark images reveals the brilliant colors of red and blue flowers in a mysterious way, or creates forms that look like human figures in outline. But this remains only an insinuation.

The exhibition shows how Sophie Kaiser's pictorial forms are determined by the drawn line. The artist always falls back to the structures found in this medium, varies them, and translates them into painting. Even when working with paint the theme of the reflection of light and shadow remains a leitmotif, even though the shapes of objects are dimmed in order to give color the room to develop its own life.

Text: Dr. Esther Wipfler, Munich

13 January – 22 March

Part of the exhibition consists of fluorescent tubes the formations of which are borrowings from mathematics, the other part is composed of paper works arranged along the panorama windows that serve as openings to the outside and show signs abstracted from the sciences, allowing bright daylight to shine in.

28 October – 19 December

Susanne Walter, born in Bielefeld in 1968, was a pupil in Timm Ulrich's master class at the Academy of Fine Arts Muenster. Since then she has mainly dealt with the theme 'time and its various manifestations'. During this process the artist crosses the most different techniques. She makes prints, objects, installations and does creative work in the field of land-art. In many cases, the 'making-of' of her work is just as important as the result itself, so it is documented by pictures or videos. The exhibition '...of houses and trees' brings in poetry: small paper houses with items that – when taken together – result in a piece of poetry are placed next to 'tree houses' that have roots which indicates ties and stability. In contrast, there are cardboard houses, made from used moving boxes that seem to be standing on stilts, fragile and without support. They appear to be on their way, moving – a symbol of the mobility a great number of people have today.
The tree house as a possibility to retreat is the theme of further works. Some are created in the woods where Susanne Walter builds from wood hiding places and shelters. The construction of these objects is continued by other persons – but they may also be destroyed. So these works are participatory, buildings in the public space and part of our daily life.

9 September – 19 October

Gordon Brown prefers native wood that he works on with power saws, traditional tools for sculpting and – frequently – he makes use of fire, too.
The shapes he creates show the deep respect he treats material and nature with. Brown's sculptures vary between lightness and seriousness, they display poetry and archaic reduction at the same time.

May – October

Hamideddine Bouali is a photographer, organiser of exhibitions, lecturer and founder of the Tunis photo club. He took an active part in the Tunisian revolution; like a photo journalist he photographed the daily changing situations and attached comments to his pictures on what was happening. This is available in his blog. The exhibition "Tunisian Revolution" the leitmotif shows a collection of photos and texts that document these historical days in the history of Tunisia.

6 May – 27 July

The landscapes are rough and raw, brightly coloured sea water is seeping over the picture margins. Flowers are growing drawn with a broad brush. Beate Köhne's straight presentation of nature drags the viewer into a complex thicket of structure and movement. The artist, born in Bielefeld in 1969, is living and working in Berlin.

9 March – 27 April

15 January – 2 March

In her objects and installations, the Stukenbrok-based artist Annie Fischer thematizes the crux of a human in a society where individual fulfilment has mutated into a leitmotif. You have to be yourself – no matter how!

In the 1950s it was almost a liberation to escape the narrowness of the bourgeoisie, today, however, we face the tiresome task of leading a self-fulfilled life that has to be interesting at all cost.

In doing so we frequently have an agenda that is other-directed. We are being (self) lived.

1 March – 21 May

Anna Konik (Berlin, Warsaw) is the first Artist in Residence at ZiF. In her work, Anna Konik combines documentary elements and performance, installation and sculptures. She is interested in people exposed to extreme situations. She developed a video installation dealing with alienation, hypersensitivity, loneliness and the feeling of being misunderstood.

At the centre of Konik’s attention is the human being – virtually all of her works are a process of ‘approaching’ the Other, resulting from encounters with other people and their realities. Taking the perspective of subjective experiences as her point of departure, the artist highlights their social aspect, and the viewer is confronted not only with an individual story but with broader contemporary issues. However, the work of Anna Konik refuses to be easily inscribed in the paradigm of critical art. It offers much more than just a critical description of reality or comments on the contemporary condition. Konik uses the language of video to convey her protagonists’ experiences and mental states, seeking formal solutions to translate complex mechanisms of memory work, retrospection, emotions, elusive intuitions or impressions into the syntax of video installation and the structure of exhibition space. In her works form and content always complement each other and are equally important.