Juliette Blightman, Ellen Gronemeyer, KAYA, Martin Kohout, Katrin Mayer, Chris Reinecke and Pablo Schlumberger
From February 23 to May 19, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof presents
„Realismus mit Schleife“ (Realism with a bow) with Juliette Blightman, Ellen Gronemeyer, KAYA, Martin Kohout, Katrin Mayer, Chris Reinecke
and Pablo Schlumberger at Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof. The artists contemplate the loops and dynamics that are inscribed in the friction between subject and reality in a variety of ways and media: painting, drawing, video, sculpture, and installation. What is understood as reality is a fragile interplay of different conditions and relationships that pass through subjective as well as sociocultural and even technical filters.
The bow in the exhibition title is borrowed from Chris Reinecke’s work (born 1936). The impetus for this group exhibition was an increasing fascination with her works from the 1960s to the present; it does not view them as a historical point of departure, however, but as part of an intergenerational, contemporary artistic production. Realism is, by necessity, enmeshed in its present. In work and time, observations, images and techniques, bodies and identities, and in spaces. It has an observant perspective and the material it deals with is also a social material. This enmeshing entails a proximity to what exists, but also a distance — offering an open space, but not necessarily security. In it one can search for an understanding and a dialog in which expiration dates and values are present. Loops that can be tied and loosened, and are always an invitation.