Left goes to the past, right to today. Five exhibits in a row illustrate a development. Here, in the small gallery of the Tölzer Stadtmuseum, Jeannine Rücker interpreted the exhibition theme “Always different” with one of her favorite motifs. She brought clouds to the canvas in the style of old paintings, lush, rain-heavy, iridescent clouds in a dark blue and thundery rust-colored sky. You can feel with every glance that this formation is constantly moving and changing. Just as art does and has always done.
Rücker shows this in a chronological order: In the left part of the arrangement, the painting is followed by a cloud black and white photo, then a color photo of the same motif; A QR code appears on the right, an expression of the modern age and the key to a video that brings the entire sequence to the eye in a cinematic manner. On the far right, finally, the current last stage of progress: the QR code has merged with the acrylic painting, “exemplary for new paths in art”, as Rücker explains in her video.
Jeannine Rücker brings the development of art to the fore – from painting on canvas to the painterly processed QR code.
“The view of women is different”
Together with her five colleagues from the “Females” group, Rücker is exhibiting in the Tölzer Stadtmuseum. The “females” got together five years ago, they meet regularly and work on a common topic. “Always different” is her fifth exhibition, three of which were on view in the Domagk studios in Munich, one in the Kleiner Kursaal in Bad Tölz. In the museum gallery they are for the first time, a suitably centrally located space for art to be seen. Because the six women make visible what can easily go under in the art world. In her own words, “Women’s view of practically every subject is different.”
It starts with communication, says Marianne Hilger. “There are a lot of things you don’t have to explain to a woman.” The team meetings showed that. Jeannine Rücker confirms it. “We always find a common level.” And there are some issues, the two of them agree with their colleague Stefanie Macherhammer, that men would probably not deal with specifically at all, for example that of the previous exhibition: “Or rather”.
The new show is deliberately ambiguous. You can read that in all combinations, says Rücker. “Always the same. Always different. Always different.” That opens up a lot of leeway, “also formally”, as Marianne Hilger emphasizes. Your untitled “object” is the only sculptural exhibit in this exhibition. It is a narrow, tall box, open on all sides, with emblems that can be interpreted in many ways. At the bottom of the interior a spider appears in the web, closely surrounded by a snake. Behind it, on the high back wall, an extensive image of partly bizarre skulls; some as if they were smiling, one with a traditional hat, one with pigtails, another with studded nails. The associations are not enough – on one side of the clear box you can see a membrane cut into the brain, on the other a reflecting Jana’s head. It often annoys her that the masculine is in the foreground everywhere, says the artist, which is why the mythological Janus has turned into a Jana in her. The artist has chosen her own profile for this, on the one hand as a young woman, on the other hand as an old woman – in between, when looking at it, the face of the person looking at it involuntarily appears.
Hilger provides a detailed written explanation of this enigmatic, somehow morbid and yet at the same time playful and cheerful object with references to mythology, natural history and anatomy. “Uroboros”, the snake biting its tail – here in connection with the spider – is for them “the” symbol for “always different”. Brahmanic symbols, a veil of Isis, death symbols, red “threads of life” – “a conglomerate”, as Hilger himself says. “I have a feeling it belongs together.” How, she doesn’t put into words. “If I could do that, I would write,” she says, but her means of expression is art.
Priska Ludwig expresses herself in a very abstract way. Her kaleidoscopic images are not immediately recognizable as photographs; act like shimmering play of colors and patterns. In fact, there are natural motifs hidden in every picture. Sometimes it is a yew tree, digitally photographed, mirrored, zoomed, alienated into the most beautiful ornaments and transformed into unreal green and purple tones. Sometimes she plays in this image processing way with amethyst and animal skulls, sometimes with rocks and water. She wants to “inspire and remind of the transience of time”, explains Priska Ludwig.
At Priska Ludwig, the photo of a yew tree is transformed into a multifaceted kaleidoscope.
In a certain way, Stefanie Macherhammer does this with her acrylic painting “Standstill”, which shows stacked red armchairs, all of which have not been used. “The work was made during the lockdown,” she explains. “Everyone tries to carry on as always. And yet suddenly everything is different.” The title of the exhibition resonates.
Stefanie Macherhammer addresses the “standstill” during the corona crisis.
Lost pictures
Andrea Meßmer, who keeps a yak herd together with her husband in Jachenau, wants to capture “short, ephemeral moments in detailed views” artistically. There is the caressing hand on one face, there is the woman with the apron biting into her wooden spoon, perhaps out of desperation that women always have to do everything – house and yard, kitchen, children, art?
Andrea Meßmer wants to tell little everyday stories.
Patrizia Zewe involuntarily contributed the epitome of transience to the exhibition. The former chairwoman of the Tölzer Kunstverein, who went back to her home town of Bad Nauheim a few years ago, cannot come herself. As the original “female”, she sent two acrylic paintings on a journey – with a parcel service. Despite all the research, you simply did not arrive in Bad Tölz. Only a photo of the lost pictures can be seen in the exhibition.
Females: “Always different”, opening on Thursday, October 14th, 7 pm, City Museum, Marktstrasse 48, Bad Tölz; until November 3rd