Building a house – the exhibition “HUELLE UND IDYLLE” / “FACADE AND ARCADIA” explores structures and constructions surrounding the phenomenon of habitation which, depending upon individual or cultural disposition, can call forth numerous variations. Not everyone has a house but most have definition of what it is to them. These inner visions of a “house” are actually model homes – in the best and worst sense of the word. Whether a shack or a palace, whether a swinging urbane solution or an isolated alpine hut, whether through walls, coverings or inter-space – the basis always lies within the spatial, territorial and ultimately the spiritual demarcation that evolves into a materialistic state – stable, weatherproof and only presumably permanent. In this sense, housing occupies a specialized and functional space and indicates personal retreat as a finely defined microcosm within the infinite.

Walls, masonry and facades thereby embody the intersection of protection and vulnerability, of public and private, of isolation and communication. In this very special position between the finite and infinite these elements link and sometimes overpopulate the terrain, thereby mutating to a membrane at once hermetic and permeable.

Housing and Comfort in a Contemporary Context

The exhibition presents contemporary positions within this interrelated topic ranging from horrific to homey in paintings, drawings, sculpture, installations, photography and video. These explore the ideal as well as the material parameters of primitive shelters, facades, bodies and limitations – real and unreal markers that have been either erected or not actually resolved. Ultimately, it is also about utopian concepts and visual results.

The very conscious confrontations presented in the exhibition span tensions between the planned and the illusionary, the material and the ephemeral, the “stone and meat”. It examines various aspects of interior and exterior spaces bridging the phenomenon of personal spaces, inner thought, walls as an important unity, social as well as political limitations, to the issue of shelter and, last but least, the trap.

My home is my castle and the castle that’s me.
Within this context an archetypical examination of psychological uncertainty, fear and aggression is self-evident. Equally, within the wide divergence between the horrific and the homey topics of contemplation, playfulness and inner retreat render soothing variations on “homing” and “cocooning”.

U. Jagla-Blankenburg

Participating Artists:
Karl Bohrmann, Piotr Dluzniewski, Edgar Endress, Belu-Simion Fainaru, Katharina van Hoffs, Leiko Ikemura, Katharina Jahnke, Boaz Kaizman, Hubert Kiecol, Philipp von Matt, Rita McBride, Horst Muench, Ulrike Nattermueller, Peter Piller, Gregor Schneider, Frances Scholz, Stefan Strunden, Sumi Maro, Peter Sutter, Leif Trenkler.