Normally you learn vocabulary and grammar with cloze texts, the conjugation of “vivre” or “sentire” perhaps, I live, you live, we feel, you feel… But life itself also fits into cloze texts, which then reads like this: “Jealousy is as pale as bone/ It tastes of ash/ Smells of bile./ It feels bloodless/ Looks like poor rats/ It sounds like wells./ Jealousy is stuffed with tears.” Or like this: “Fainting is all-encompassing like infinity/ It tastes bitter/ and smells of rotten leaves./ It feels powerful/ and looks like dense fog./ Quietly, it sounds like the calm before/ the storm. It is unpredictable.”
The texts, together with a large number of artistic works from a wide variety of directions, are part of an exhibition that can be seen in the Feierwerk from Thursday after the vernissage this Wednesday. It is part of the anniversary program with which the addiction and youth welfare agency Condrobs is celebrating its 50th anniversary. “Art Paths – Drawn by Life” is the title.
Karl Heinz Dohmen and his colleagues then placed life at the center of their contribution to the exhibition – to be more precise, a capital “L” and a small “eben” below it, forming the center of a patchwork carpet full of colorful scenes. “It’s just life,” says artist and workshop leader Dohmen, who is himself a Condrobs client and wants to use his work to “gain a certain lightness from all things that are actually dramatic.”
The art project itself has also developed such a lightness, although it took two years of preparation including corona restrictions and an enormous amount of organizational work. The threads ran together with Emilie Gendron and Gerhard Schützinger. They took care of the financing – the largest part is taken over by Aktion Mensch -, the 25 workshops on photography, collage, sculpture, painting, street art and other genres in various Condrobs facilities throughout Bavaria and the respective artistic direction, they developed the extensive, lovingly designed catalog and the exhibition itself. “It was a huge collaboration,” says Gendron. “Everyone wanted to take part.”
This is especially true for the Condrobs clients. Many of them actually find it difficult to commit themselves to a cause for any length of time, and many hesitate to appear in public. But in the Pedro addiction center in Neuperlach, which will soon be moving into new premises after three long years of transition, the workshop participants spent days patiently assembling motifs related to the new location from individual painted canvases under the title “Room Appropriation”. And the project of the Stadttheater Ingolstadt, which actually wanted to offer a protective framework for creative work for two months, finally resulted in two performances in the local pedestrian zone – on the initiative of the participants.
In the end, she was completely absorbed in painting, says 45-year-old Raimonda after the workshop.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
“I had the thought that you don’t have to be perfect, it fits the way it is,” says Raimonda. “And I realize that’s good for me.” The 45-year-old took part in the painting workshop in the Prima Donna therapeutic women’s residential community in Obersendling, entitled “Individuality”. At first she was skeptical and unsure, but then she was completely absorbed in painting. And her neighbor, who wants to remain anonymous, adds: “The pressure has gone away, so I felt free.”
The workshop leaders also liked the work. “I noticed that I could deliver added value,” says Johannes Brechter. He actually does graffiti, but worked with young people from the Inizio residential community in Johanneskirchen for the exhibition, cutting out forms, painting and assembling them into idiosyncratic sculptures. “At first I was afraid that it was old-fashioned, so handicraft-oriented,” he says. However, the ten participants were “super open-minded and committed”.
Brechter is one of six workshop leaders, all professional street artists, brought by the patron of the project: action artist Wolfgang Flatz – currently also in the media because of his dispute with construction and real estate entrepreneur Urs Brunner about a studio on the Praterinsel . Flatz had given Condrobs a work of art for his 40th birthday, the bridge. It can be seen in the logo of the social welfare agency. This time, the 69-year-old wanted to “open the door to the next generation of artists” with his patronage.
One of them is Lapiz, who sprayed a graffito about freedom on a hut wall in the garden of the Condrobs integration project on Kistlerhofstrasse in Obersendling. And under the direction of Matthias Mross, the integration project in Eglharting (Ebersberg district) created a joint work on the subject of “the past”: the picture of an overflowing ashtray composed of individually painted canvases.
The artist Lapiz sprayed a graffito in the garden of the integration project on Kistlerhofstrasse.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
In Eglharting, the image of an overflowing ashtray was created from individually painted canvases.
(Photo: Condrobs)
A participant shows the gaps in the text that were created in the “Inner Maps” writing workshop.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
“You can actually make art out of almost anything,” sums up a 27-year-old who took part in Pedro’s “Inner Maps” writing workshop and does not want to give her name. She contributed one of the cloze texts: “Sin is red like love/ sin tastes of blood/ and smells of roses/ sin feels light & heavy at the same time – torn./ and looks like an angel/ yet sounds like the devil / Sin is bittersweet”.
“Art paths – drawn from life”, paint shop in the celebrations, Hansastraße 31, vernissage on Wednesday, July 6th, 6 p.m., opening on Thursday, July 7th, 5 p.m., on view until July 27th. program below www.condrobs.de/kunstwege. Ceremony and symposium on social work, Kranhalle im Feierwerk, July 7, 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.