Kategorie: General

The established and renowned Lingen Art Prize will be awarded for the 22nd time this year. Since 1983, it has been dedicated exclusively to artists working in the medium of painting; previous winners have included Karin Kneffel (1994), Antje Majewski (1998), Cornelius Völker (2004), Julia Oschatz (2008) and Birgit Megerle (2010); in 2014, Marieta Chirulescu received it.

This year, a total of twelve directors and curators of museums and institutions were asked to submit two proposals each. The standard of the submitted applications was astonishingly high.  The jury – consisting of the members of the Friends of the Lingen Art Prize Sigrid Hohoff, Marita Kamp and Richard Lange as well as Oriane Durand (Artistic Director, Kunstverein Dortmund), Kathleen Rahn (Director Kunstverein Hannover) and Meike Behm (Director Kunsthalle Lingen) – came to the conclusion to award the prize to the Brazilian artist Éder Oliveira.

Éder Oliveira was born in 1983 in Timboteua, Brazil, and now lives in Belém; he graduated in liberal arts from the Universidade Federal do Pará in 2007. He works in the media of painting, mural painting and public art. His main motifs are large-format portraits mainly of young men, mostly painted in monochrome red, blue or yellow. However, these are not friends, relatives or acquaintances of the artist, but are based on photographs from the local newspaper in Bélem, published on a page on which the police print pre-trial detainees and suspects taken into custody – before any trial – mostly with an African or indigenous background. Thus, Éder Oliveira’s painting is characterized by a political and socially critical background.

The Lingen Art Prize is sponsored this year by the Johann Alexander Wisniewsky Foundation. The exhibition of Éder Oliveira and the accompanying catalog are made possible by the Friends of the Lingen Art Award.

Reinhard Wieczorek, Henning Rethmeier, Annette Venebrügge, Dagmar Demming, Thomas Jessen, Beate Spalthoff, Ildefons Höyng, Jochen Twelker, Barbara Steppe, Rolf Bier, Karin Kneffel, Andrea Scrima, Antje Majewski, Matthias Kanter, Amalia Theodorakopoulos, Cornelius Völker, Annelise Coste, Julia Oschatz, Birgit Megerle, Kim Nekarda, Marieta Chirulescu, Éder Oliveira

With the group exhibition „22 – Painting from the Art Collection of the City of Lingen (Ems)“, Kunsthalle Lingen presents an overview of a large part of a municipal art collection that has grown steadily since the awarding of the first Lingen Art Prize in 1983. The number 22 includes all the recipients of the now renowned and established award of the Lingen Art Prize since then until last year 2016. Presented at a glance in the two exhibition rooms of the Kunsthalle, the viewer can read both what kind of painting was and is current in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, and a piece of history of this traditional medium is conveyed. In retrospect, it is also possible to say who among the current and former award winners are today among the renowned positions in contemporary art history, because some of the artists on display hold professorships at renowned art academies, while others have ceased to work artistically.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Isabel Albrecht was born in 1968 and studied free art at the Royal College of Art in London from 2002 to 2004. Throughout her life, Galerie hanfweihnacht in Frankfurt am Main and Galerie Patrick Heide in London hosted solo exhibitions for her, she participated in group exhibitions at Danese in New York, Gallery Joe in Philadelphia and Gallery Anthony Grant in New York. Until her untimely death in 2013, however, no institutions realized solo exhibitions of Isabel Albrecht’s work.Kunsthalle Lingen, in collaboration with Basis Kunstverein in Frankfurt am Main, posthumously presents her first institutional solo exhibition.
Isabel Albrecht worked primarily in the artistic media of painting and drawing. Her equally colorful images as works on paper in black or gray / white usually cover dense structures of thin lines running horizontally and vertically, so that they create a flickering mesh and impress above all by a minimalist formal language. Isabel Albrecht once spoke of the drawing process as a visual thought process, a statement that links her art to the achievements of 1960s conceptual art. Based on a strict concept as well as minimalist in its formal language, Isabel Albrecht’s art is in the tradition of art that is reduced in form and color, such as that produced by Agnes Martin. Isabel Albrecht’s works, on the other hand, were inspired, among other things, by the artist’s fascination with modern architecture since the achievements of the Bauhaus. The works, which continue imaginarily beyond the actual edges of the picture, refer to nothing but themselves and confront the viewer with aesthetically high-quality art.The solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Lingen will introduce the work of Isabel Albrecht through an extensive presentation of works from 1998 to 2012.

Kerstin Cmelka, Tom Dale, Judith Hopf, Peter Fischli / David Weiss, Annika Kahrs, Harry Kramer, Claus Richter, Shimabuku, Corinna Schnitt

Under the title „Cinéma“, Kunsthalle Lingen presents an extensive program of video and film productions by nationally and internationally renowned artists. On display will be „Microdramas“ by Kerstin Cmelka, dealing with the broad theme of relationships between people, a work by Tom Dale that negotiates the phenomenon of memory, Judith Hopf presents a „Hospital Bone Dance,“ Peter Fischli and David Weiss show a fascinating chain reaction titled „The Course of Things,“ Annika Kahrs sets the stage in „Playing to the Birds,“ a piece by Franz Liszt, Harry Kramer made experimental films in the 1950s and 1960s, Claus Richter’s musical „Salve Monstrum“ is set in the microcosm of a Renaissance castle in which Richter’s obsession with stages, costumes and obscure characters turns into a bitter game with dandyesque kings, doubting robbers and an ever-grooving court, Shimabuku’s film „From Bow to Bow“ deals with the transformation of a weapon into a musical instrument, and finally Corinna Schnitt negotiates American family idylls.

Antje Majewski and Paweł Freisler with Agnieszka Polska, Jimmie Durham and Piotr Życieński.
This exhibition on the theme of apples, initiated by the artists Antje Majewski and Paweł Freisler, is both an artistic and scientific-cultural-historical project, which experiences an extension into the urban space with a planting action involving urban groups.

On display at Kunsthalle Lingen are paintings of old and new apple varieties in the tradition of Natura Morte, an Eve with an Apple, and video works by Antje Majewski; dried and carved apples by Paweł Freisler that appear both as objects, in the form of photographs by Piotr Życieński, and as images in sculpture using a 3D printer; Agnieszka Polska’s video work „Garden,“ which takes us into the legendary artist’s garden, where, among other things, a perfect egg can be found; and Jimmie Durham’s apple juice bottles, which he produced for dOCUMENTA (13), where two apple trees were also planted.

Since an apple variety can only remain a variety if it is grafted by humans onto a new rootstock, i.e. cloned, preserving the incredible variety of colors, shapes and tastes of possible apple varieties is a cultural achievement.

Therefore, a very important part of the exhibition will not take place in the museum itself, but as an artistic-ecological project in the urban space. In March 2018, up to 50 trees of old apple varieties will be planted in public places in the city of Lingen. Their apples will be available to all citizens of Lingen.

Sunah Choi, Diango Hernández, David Jablonowski, Victor Man, Rupprecht Matthies, Tobias Rehberger, Willem de Rooij, Julia Schmid, Roman Schramm, Anne Steinhagen.   

 The motif of flowers has a long tradition in art history, beginning as early as in Pompeian wall painting from around 20 BC, for here floral elements appear without individual flowers having a specific symbolic meaning. Finally, the lily occupies a special place in Christian iconography, because it stands for purity related to the figure of Mary. In the 17th century, the Flemish painter Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568 to 1625) became known for his colorful depictions of flowers, elaborately tied garlands and wreaths. In parallel, different flowers appear as an essential motif in many still lifes from this period and withered flowers, for example, stand for death, blooming flowers for life. In Impressionist painting, for example, Claude Monet’s water lily paintings contrast the age of the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of noisy big cities with tranquility and idyll.

In the 21st century, too, flowers appear as a motif in many works by contemporary artists. The group exhibition entitled „Lilia & Tulipan“ presents paintings, installations, objects, photography, and video works by nationally and internationally renowned artists Sunah Choi, Diango Hernández, David Jablonowski, Victor Man, Rupprecht Matthies, Tobias Rehberger, Willem de Rooij, Julia Schmid, Roman Schramm, and Anne Steinhagen, who in different ways refer to current aspects of our time through the motif of flowers and plants.

The musician, actor and writer Peter Fjodoroff, 1946 – 2015.
The experimental artist lived for many years in Wietmarschen-Lohne. Born in Hannover in 1946 and came to Lingen in about 1948, where many knew him in the 60s as Peter Newmerschyzky and lead singer of the legendary first Lingen beat group „Les Copains“. Soon our town became too crowded for him. Peter went to Munich in 1968 and performed under the stage name Peter Fjodoroff at the experimental Büchner Theater there in the PHREN group; he was also a cello-playing member of the PHREN Ensemble Musik. In the 1970s he edited the small magazine „Analle“, a journal for new developments in literature.
With others, the writer, musician and actor founded the ensemble for experimental music „Setzen – Gegensetzen“ in 1987. It improvisationally processed noises, tones and sounds into musical material on woods, tenor horn, voice and other sound generators. The seemingly simple and brittle material of the woods transforms into fine, powerful and complex sound structures. Unexpected parallels to the sound of the wood can be found in the interplay with the tenor horn and/or the fretless guitar (both played by Fjodoroff).
Helmut Günter Berninger (* August 5, 1927 in Munich; † July 1, 2011 ibid.) was a German painter, architect and philosopher.
Helmut Berninger completed an apprenticeship as a painter from 1942 to 1944. In 1945 he was drafted into the Navy and became a prisoner of war. From 1947 to 1948 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Willi Geiger. From 1949 to 1956 he created woodcuts, illustrations, vignettes in various art magazines, feuilletons (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Neue Zeitung), theater programs. In 1953 he decided to paint exclusively abstract.
Jürgen von Huendeberg (aka Hans-Otto Maximilian von Huendeberg, HOMJ von Huendeberg, or simply „Iwan“), was a German painter often associated with the abstract art of the postwar years.
Jürgen von Huendeberg was born in Dresden on April 10, 1922, into a family of Baltic Germans. From childhood he lived in Munich, Germany, where he studied architecture and philosophy at the University of Munich, two years at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (1945-1947) and some time with Werner Gilles and Adolf Schinnerer.
In 1949 he became associated with ZEN 49, a group of German artists who advocated new expressions of abstract art.
Von Huendeberg was successful for a few years. They were the first two abstract paintings purchased by the Haus der Kunst, the main museum of modern art in Munich. In 1956 he received a cultural grant from the Association of German Industry, in 1957 he was invited to the Premio Lissone, and in 1962 he won the Seerosen Prize together with Edgar Ende and three other artists. His paintings were shown in Italy, Canada, the USA and New Zealand. In Germany there were numerous exhibitions, including one with a close artist friend, Helmut Berninger.

In 1970, the artist Harry Kramer (b. 1925 in Lingen, d. 1997 in Kassel) followed a call to become a professor at the Kassel University of Fine Arts. Himself skeptical about the question of whether art could be taught, he decided to give up his own production and in the future to make and exhibit art together with his students. On the other hand, the artist Kramer did not disappear completely into the pedagogical province, but only shifted the authorship from the previously sole one to that of the collective under the name Atelier Kramer. „The renunciation of signature does not go back to a refusal to art, but to the signature,“ he formulated in this regard. In terms of content, it was a matter of jointly conceived and executed actions.

The premise was that art is always radical, and following this, the actions had existential features, existential traits. The gradual appropriation of all art production by the market on the one hand and a society tending towards conservatism on the other were reflected. In 1971, for example, Harry Kramer walled himself up in the Fridericianum Museum in Kassel for ten days and communicated with visitors only through bars.

An even more extreme reaction to the phenomenon of the surveillance state was the installation Documents and photographs from the time of Atelier Kramer will be presented.

Curator of the exhibition is Heiner Schepers, former director of the Kunsthalle Lingen.

The exhibition in the cabinet of the Kunsthalle Lingen entitled „Weltenanschauungen“ will make the systems theory of the Bielefeld sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927 to 1998) haptically tangible. The basic idea is to create a teaching exhibition on a high aesthetic level that brings the complex teachings of the social scientist closer. Core statements of Niklas Luhmann are e.g. „Social systems delimit themselves in principle against their environment“, „The border of a system to the environment marks a complexity gradient“ or also „Social systems are nothing else than communication“.

The aim of this exhibition is to present these core statements in the interaction of three exemplary social systems of our world in exchange with each other: Art, Economy and Science. The complexity gradient is mediated, for example, by a wall between the different systems, which initially prevents an unhindered exchange. How communication can nevertheless take place, how much of it reaches the counterpart, and how this shapes the view of one another, can be experienced in the installation.

The audience’s task is to recognize Luhmann’s thoughts in the process.

The concrete goal is to present an increasingly complex world, based on the division of labor, as a kind of three-dimensional and walkable Venn diagram in a room.

The curators Prof. Dr. Till Albert (Professor of Corporate Management, Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, Lingen site) and Peter Lütje (artist, Lingen) want to create an awareness of the fact that every human being provides an effect on togetherness, even if not everyone can recognize this immediately.

Zuzanna Czebatul, Angela Fette, Sina Folwaczny, Parastou Forouhar, Kalin Lindena, Mona Mahall / Asli Serbest, Anne Pöhlmann, Rebecca Ann Tess, Anke Weyer, Adrian Williams.

The phrase „Enough talk, let’s play!“ comes from the character Billie Jean King in the 2017 film titled „Battle of the Sexes,“ she utters it to her male opponent in tennis, Bobby Riggs. The film is based on a true story and tells of the struggle for gender equality using the example of unequal victory bonuses in the tennis tournament. Even today, women earn less than men in many areas; in the art operating system, the art of female artists is offered on the art market for less money than that of male artists. Against this backdrop, as well as in light of the current #metoo debate, the group exhibition titled „Enough Talking, Let’s Play!“ interrogates whether feminist issues are still relevant in art today or whether they have shifted issues to other aspects after the feminist revolution in the 1970s. Nine artists and the architects Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest were invited to participate, each of whose work conveys a different attitude or its own strong position in relation to the medium in which they each work and in relation to the theme to which their works each refer.

On view are a large object by Zuzanna Czebatul, a mural by Angela Fette, ceramics by Sina Folwaczny, photographs by Parastou Forouhar, paintings and objects by Kalin Lindena, photographs and a model by Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest, Fabric works by Anne Pöhlmann, photographs by Rebecca Ann Tess, paintings by Anke Weyer, and a large-scale tribune by Adrian Williams available for readings of a new text by her.