There is still no order this afternoon in the old distillery. Rather creative chaos, as the saying goes. But that’s no wonder, after all the exhibitors really don’t shy away from any effort to offer the Ebersbergers an impressive show. Besides, it’s still a few days until the vernissage. It’s on Friday January 20th at 7pm, there will be performances, a DJ and drinks.
Sounds cool right? Sure, because young people are at work here: 14 students from the art academy in Munich are creating this show together Kunstverein Ebersberg. And the special thing is: They come from two different disciplines, the chair for design and presentation (Class Katja Knaus) and the Chair of Painting and Graphics (Class Schirin Kretschmann) have joined forces for this exhibition. And quite specifically: It is not a juxtaposition of individual works, but shows the disciplines closely interwoven. In many cases, interior design and free art have fraternized to create projects.
The students have chosen the line as the overarching theme. Firstly, because it leaves a lot of room for free play, but also because the exhibition is based on a donation: from the Geretsrieder Rohi weaving mill the young artists were given scraps of yarn, all “lines”, from which they have now made thin cords, thick ropes and much more. This is how various structures were created that help the waste from textile production to be spectacularly upcycled. You will look in vain for a classic picture in a frame in this show.
Felix Richter’s wall is still covered with nails. But in the course of the exhibition, the image of a collective action is to be created there by means of colorful cords.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
Under the title “Lines”, the students explore “the fascination of the line in all its physical and imaginary effects”. The result is many expansive works, some performances, but also installations that invite the visitor to interact. Most clearly with Felix Richter: He covered an entire wall with plasterboard and provided about 1,600 nails. The wall is still empty, but there are already a few rolls of thread in different colors ready, because this is where the guests can get active: They are supposed to capture their body contours by putting threads around their nails. “This simple and recurring action of individuals ultimately creates overlapping forms – as an image of a collective action,” explains Richter.
Marie Badziong, Jana Drexel and Lina Killinger, on the other hand, invite you to change your perspective in a very unusual way: the visitors to the exhibition should lie down. The three of them designed an entire, albeit small, room with the aim of changing its atmosphere. “We found the space to be quite oppressive and wanted to transform it into an intimate oasis of calm,” explains Drexel. On the floor is a bed of light woolen threads, twisted and knotted so that they appear dense and yet organically flowing. Lying on it, one sees several horizontally stretched levels of threads that overlap and strictly segment the narrow, high room. A shimmering, cozy combination of opposites.
The young artists attached five rails to the wall for their room installation. Jana Drexel attaches thin dark threads to it, which then have to be tightened.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
Stella Akal and Burcu Bilgiç also play well with space. “Come Closer” is the name of her installation, which is intended to create walk-in structures. Colorful, sprayed paint shines on the wall in one corner, but the view and the way there are more or less blocked. The two artists stretched strands of wool across the room and laid a new covering for the hooks on the floor. “Visitors should walk through the installation physically and mentally, creating their own images depending on their point of view,” explains Bilgiç. “The pictorial here is something unattainable that only shines through as an idea.”
Luisa Pfeufer and Lena Winterholler are also expansive: they let meter-long braided sheep’s wool and cotton yarn dangle from the gallery ceiling. Because under the title “purposeful beauty” the two want to create a transfer between two traditional Bavarian handicraft techniques, the union of carpentry and braiding. “The static structure of the bundle of old farmhouses is translated into three overlapping layers by means of textile braiding,” explains Winterholler. The duo would like to knot individual, unstable strands into a closed, ornamental structure. This is intended to create an ambitious dialogue between material, craftsmanship, architecture and art.
Busy weavers: Lena Winterhaller (right) and Luisa Pfeuler still have a long way to go before their textile installation is reminiscent of a bundle.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
In addition to the static installations, there are also processual works dedicated to the line as a materialization of time. Lina Killinger, for example, uses highly aesthetic videos to show how color spreads in water. Macroscopic shots in double slow motion document movement and consistency, leaving time for precise observation of the processes of compression, expansion and dissolution.
Weizhi Wu’s work is also very meditative: He connected two young shoots, each standing in a pot of earth, with a thread. They are now a few centimeters tall, the right plant has grown a little faster, which is easy to see from the slanting thread. For Wu, line also means connection: “The relationship between people is like this thread, it is just as fragile. Perhaps the thread is long enough for growth to occur with it. Thread as a bondage. They pull, argue, wrestle until they compromise – or the thread breaks.”
Sumire Sakuma with her somewhat different knitted bunny.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
Sumire Sakuma is also about manual work; she was inspired by the Strickliesel, a small device for making knitting cords. The artist examines this mechanism using self-made objects, the components of which she found and connected in an intuitive process. One work is dynamic: here the legs of upturned chairs are used to thread thick cords, as Sakuma immediately demonstrates. The other work is static: a discarded wooden display case serves as the body, with found objects such as a spoon, a screwdriver or a tuning fork fixed on top, around which the thread can be wound. For Sumire, both objects reflect human processes, both physical and mental: “We absorb something, digest it and excrete it transformed.”
Using plaster and paint, Shirel Golde transforms the wool into exciting wall works.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
Shirel Golde pursues a completely different approach: her “Flex-Netze”, two unusual wall works, combine wool with pigment and plaster. Spontaneously and experimentally, Golde combines and stages the everyday, actually contradictory material in a new way, whereby it surpasses itself. The works appear partly massive, partly filigree, they seem fragile and steadfast at the same time. A flexible network with a picturesque structure.
Abstract map: Leonard Senholdt condenses the thread into a solid spatial object.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
And the students even had use for all the remains of the donated material: Leonard Senholdt used it to create his object “Residual Mass”. He repeatedly pressed heaps of yarn and poured hot water over it so that in the end a large, solid block would emerge. “Then all these many lines are condensed into one materialized space,” he says with a grin.
Exhibition: “Lines” at the Ebersberger Kunstverein by students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Gallery of the old distillery in the monastery building yard. Vernissage on Friday, January 20th at 7 p.m. Closing event with artist talk and performances on Sunday, February 19, at 11 a.m. Open Thursday and Friday 6pm to 8pm, Saturday 5pm to 8pm and Sunday 11am to 1pm.