Irritating, surprising, encouraging pause – all of this should ideally do all of this to the recipient or viewer of art that wants to stand out from the courtesy and the ordinary. Jörg Egerer, photographer, and Dominika Egerer, painter, are protagonists in the field of the visual arts, but they have surprised them in other ways: The two who were elected as first chairman and second chairman to the board of the Kunstverein Ottobrunn in August, have already withdrawn from it. For personal reasons, it is said.
The successor has, of course, already been arranged, and the board has even grown by one place: Reiner Binsch is the new first chairman, while Elfie Bilger and Sabine Zacharski will serve as second and third chairmen. The old, remaining board members, treasurer Elke Schäffer-Lürssen and artistic director Anna Arndt, had appointed this fresh trio within a short period of time in exchange with numerous members, “so that the association can continue to exist in accordance with the statutes”, as they say. All three new members are co-opted board members, so provisionally appointed, they will introduce themselves in the coming year at an ordinary general meeting.
“I haven’t lifted my finger now, but the request was brought to me by several members of the association,” explains Binsch, who is himself a painter and architect, of the personal development. Bilger and Zacharski are also artistically active. They know each other and have now taken on joint responsibility in a difficult phase to secure the future of the club. “We are a team,” says Binsch.
“The art association needs someone who can invest more time.”
Why the Egerers, who had recently articulated diverse and ambitious plans, withdrew so suddenly and wanted to leave the club entirely? “The art association needs someone who can invest more time,” says Jörg Egerer, who owns a photo studio in Markt Schwaben, explaining the decision. He points out that he is heavily involved in his job and emphasizes that there was a “proper handover”.
This is also confirmed by Reiner Binsch, who admits that the Egerers were “very active and hardworking”. He does not deny that their decision to withdraw came as a surprise. He and his colleagues want to pursue some of the ideas that the old board intended to promote: for example, modernize the online presence of the art association. New club software is on the agenda, as is the review of the member lists. The planning for the coming exhibition season, one of the (nicer) main tasks for the now five-member board, is of course not that easy at the moment: “Corona is just getting in between,” says Binsch. The current annual exhibition with works by the association members in the Ottobrunn town hall runs until January 6th, and a finissage may even be possible.
An “eventful year” comes to an end for the Kunstverein Ottobrunn with another change of board – in August Eva Hoffmann and Katja Ochoa Molano had only retired after two and a half years in office. Some surprises leave you speechless and reasons to remain silent, there are sometimes really good ones. Reiner Binsch quotes a sentence by Edward Hopper on his homepage: “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”