Lovers & Hunters

In the exhibition ‚Lovers & Hunters‘, Ani Schulze combines sculpture, painting, drawing, and video art to create an enigmatic narrative in which the living and the non-living, the human and the non-human, blend with each other. Through interweaving different materials such as ceramic, polymer, and steel she references mythological and personal stories. Hybrid and vulnerable characters form a surreal landscape and dreamlike scenarios. The installation creates an atmosphere in which desires, fantasies and feelings are negotiated. In doing so she explores contemporary developments such as/ of ideology, globalization, faith, and digitalization. Ani Schulze treats the architecture of Kunstverein Siegen as an organic structure: The shop window symbolizes a mouth, or an entrance to the body. Two hanging sculptures offer external protection like guards. Different materials and techniques reference skin and muscles. The figurative sculptures (Les Chiens de Garde, The Fluteplayers, The Lover, and Jasmin) appear in different roles: as lovers and guardians, as lucky charms and travelers, transcending time and space. Throughout the exhibition, couples and duos reappear. They negotiate opposites, ambivalences, and dualities among themselves, to which the title of the exhibition Lovers & Hunters also refers. The film “Flint House Lizard”, as the permanent pulsating heart of the exhibition, creates a surreal microcosm in which people, animals, plants, economy, animate and inanimate things and bio-technical hybrids are interwoven. Moving between fable, reality, and speculation the film reflects how social structures and current forms of populism influence people. Natural landscapes, haptic detail shots and worm-like creatures are contrasted with computer-generated images from mass simulation software. “Flint House Lizard” takes its cue from a theory by Russian scientist and cosmologist Alexander Chizhevsky (1897-1964). He claims that social evolution and mass movements are both related to and influenced by periodic solar cycles. Using fables, animation, and collage, Schulze allegorically depicts the reciprocal relationship between the body, technology, control, and space. With their strong directness and colorfulness, the works tell about a permanent search for alternative identities, spaces, and change. Ani Schulze's exhibition Lovers & Hunters leads visitors through various states of longing and existence into a surreal cosmos. Ani Schulze (*1982) studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, the Glasgow School of Arts and the art academies in Düsseldorf and Karlsruhe. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, screenings and talks, at, among others, the Salzburg and Kölnischer Kunstverein, I: Project Space in Beijing, SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE in Frankfurt, Galerie Nagel Draxler/ Reisebürogalerie in Cologne, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp. The exhibition is sponsored by BBK Neustart Kultur, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, and the E.ON Foundation.