11/05/2018 – 21/05/2018

In the face of a time which reproduces itself incessantly in a purely affirmative manner as if by magic and in which everything historical seems to spread out on an unlimited, uniform surface…

In the face of a time of permanent illumination and demystification of life, we should look to the dark side away from all the glistening surfaces. So let’s save ourselves in the dark. For it can be understood as a last shelter from the processes of harmonization in the world cleverly camouflaged in the flow of its spread. The escape into the art-inherent thicket of the night is an attempt at isolation in order to cope with the visual overwhelming and appropriation of an eternal daylight.

This exhibition turns away from a self outdated, almost incapacitated present as well as from an art production that only knows how to reflect our time in any direction – and which thus likes to refer to the once proclaimed postmodern and devouring attitude of Anything Goes. Rather, the artists in this exhibition bring together an intellectual approach to artistic technique, the tradition of Romanticism, Impressionism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. They deliberately update the art-historical complexity of their motifs and styles and ultimately also the reception of time. They create an opposite world, a place of the indeterminate, of referential concentration, which creates space for reflection on regressive processes that are necessarily connected with melancholy, loss, nightmare, destruction, a state of trance.

This night side of reason calls for an artist who knows how to absorb the immanent movements of art history and at the same time insists on his melancholic, highly reflective, imaginative, offside world. Insisting on finding reality through the establishment of boundaries that cannot be overcome even by technical processes and are thus resistant to simulation and media reusability.

The turning away from our constantly illuminated, illuminated world thus strengthens us in our attempt to enter the refuge of darkness, into a forest full of immanent reference possibilities of art. Symbolically branched out, contemplatively tuned, plunging into a mysterious silence, the protected view into the artist’s unique imaginations can get lost and bring time to a halt, at least for a short time. In this way, the magical, contemplative experience before the work of art can once again be assigned the leading role in contemporary art.

Uwe Goldenstein, curator of the exhibition.