Ladies and gentlemen, dear artists, dear Professor Doberauer, dear Professor Pontoppidan, dear Dr Budde, the painter Henri Matisse made the following remark, which I can reproduce as follows: Everyone admires the flowers in my paintings, but nobody looks at the flowers in my garden. In relation to today's exhibition, Matisse's remark could be applied to a picture in this exhibition in the foyer, and one could ask: Why do we admire a painted, dirty concrete mixer in the picture by Lola Cuallado, but have probably never been interested in the dirty concrete mixer on the next building site - at least never aesthetically immersed ourselves in its appearance?
If I try to find an answer, it will be as follows: Perhaps we did perceive the concrete mixer as fascinating when we were children, for example, but - somehow - forgot this in the course of our lives. What is certain, however, is this: Everything about Lola Cuallado's painted lorry is expressly made and painted as a painting, it is as it is written on the canvas and nothing else. This expressiveness allows us to take a closer look, allows us to perceive the traces of dirt not simply as traces of dirt, but as a balanced speckling, if not as dripping, as an all-over, it also allows us to see the scaffolding of the ladder of this truck as a sculpture, the grooves of the tyres as a visual attraction, the rusty red of the mighty hubcap as a differentiated peinture. In the end, we also recognise a long history of painting in this picture, which is painted along with it, as it were; we recognise so-called American photo-realism in it, possibly the dripping of a Jackson Pollock, the world of things by painters such as Konrad Klapheck or Tatjana Doll. And we realise: what aesthetic options a concrete mixer like this doesn't carry - when a painter like Lola Cuallado paints it.
And: We find it really exciting that a concrete mixer is suddenly parked in the foyer of this academy, even if only half of it is. We have never actually seen such a half concrete mixer before. Incidentally, there is another expressive painting by Lola Cuallado in the lecture theatre depicting an object of heavy industry - what is it, a conveyor belt?
Let's stay a little longer with the pictures in this lecture theatre. Three slender vertical formats by Donghwan Kim hang under the title The Three Graces. In his paintings, he incorporates elements from architectural ornaments, stone statues or classical paintings and combines them in new interpretations with people and objects from his daily life. There are no saints, no niche figures from religious contexts, immersed in themselves in oversized figures, but young people with smartphones and coffee to go, bathed in shadowed light that plunges their faces into darkness or divides them in half. I would say that they could be members of any society in the world, and the painter could even have seen us like this at such a moment. Donghwan Kim models his unknown protagonists like a sculptor, possibly quoting art-historical models, immersing the figures in a strange, perhaps nocturnal monochrome.
One picture further on, we see a landscape in dark monochrome that now actually appears somnambulistic. It is by the painter Chenzhong Xu. Light also plays a special role in his painting, not only because of the absence of daylight in the depiction, but also because the light is reflected in the different ways in which the paint is applied, in the painterly gestures in different ways, changing its appearance with every step in front of this picture. Chenzhong Xu sees the reduced colourfulness as an offer of meditation, speaks of "peace of mind", one could also see it as a possibility of seclusion (famously a motif of the philosopher and theologian Meister Eckhart). If you are wondering how it is that the two-part landscape fits so precisely into the framing of the wall, then the answer is: it is no coincidence, because Chenzhong Xu painted it for this wall.
The explosion in Kun Su's painting right next to it stands in conceivable contrast to this; we cannot recognise exactly what is exploding and yet at first glance we see a catastrophe symbolic of the present, we see violence that painterly depicts with abstract means and quite attractively an event that is actually automatically associated with war.
In the sequence of works, we see four completely different approaches to the world and how this can be depicted in painting. Behind me on the front wall, you can see two large vertical formats that were recognisably created for the location: the rising clouds of smoke by Justus Körtgen, the ominous-looking entanglements by Serafina Gmach and, hanging in a much smaller format above the wing, a fearful face painted by Christina Reschetnikov, who is primarily interested in the inner world of people. Using dirty colours, ugly shapes and experiments with textures, techniques and different materials, she creates dark paintings that evoke aversion and mixed feelings. Most recently, she thematises her grief and fear in the face of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, in which members of her family have already died.
Ladies and gentlemen, especially dear artists, I hope you will forgive me for limiting my somewhat more detailed comments on individual works to those that are in this lecture theatre and thus in your view, simply because you can follow my explanations a little closer to the respective subject of the picture and I will not tire you too much with my own observations.
I don't want to go too far afield, but I would like to talk about some fundamental findings in the visual arts today. Today, it is no longer completely self-evident to approach art freely and openly in terms of aesthetic and formal aspects and criteria. Culture and the visual arts are subjected to an exceptionally severe stress test. This stress test is multi-layered. It encompasses all of today's political issues, the conflict surrounding the last documenta and the current wars, as well as the political and cultural conflicts that are arising all over the world as a result, and which also overlay the cultural and art world and the discourse surrounding it.
At the same time, an "art after the end of its autonomy" is now being proclaimed - as if an art that generates itself out of itself and reflects on itself, its very own means, could no longer be credible and relevant. Legitimate, absolutely fundamental principles of visual art are being questioned or even abandoned. But I would like to emphasise this: Art, if it really sees itself as art, is always already and irrevocably autonomous, its language is aesthetically constituted, and even if it deals with every conceivable phenomenon, crisis and conflict in this world, it remains independent and autonomous in this aesthetic constitution, in other words: it cannot simply be translated into another cultural language. It is visual. You could also put it another way: Art after the end of autonomy is no longer art. And even art that deals with armed conflicts such as the current ones, if it sees itself as art and not as mere activism, remains autonomous, self-referential, irreplaceable in the way it expresses itself.
I see the art academy as an excellent place to repeatedly develop, test and insist on the indispensability and irreplaceability of this aesthetic language according to its own time. This brings us back to the PINXIT exhibition with paintings by 22 artists from Professor Anke Doberauer's class.
A class exhibition should certainly not be confused with a thematic group show. In fact, the opposite is true: it is not about thematic coherence, but rather about bringing out the most diverse temperaments possible. "The search for formal and thematic solutions and the play with the viewer's perception are combined in the works of the young painters with questions about the current human condition," says the project description.
As mentioned, this conditio humana is communicated in different ways in the exhibited works. There is, for example, colour field painting: abstraction with figurative allusions, sometimes like the window view
outside.
Antonio Sarcinella, for example, deals with the phenomenon and concept of space and its relationship between inside and outside. Changing chromatic constellations are explored in identical compositions.
Spatiality and structure are also themes for Paul Graßl, resulting in a five-part linoleum print series inspired by the parallel perspective of Japanese picture scrolls, in which spatiality is created without vanishing points.
is displayed.
Furthermore, in the exhibition we repeatedly encounter people as a motif in painting, "motif" here being meant in both senses of the word, as a subject and also as a motif.
as a motivation.
Leon Kiel uses the theme of "figure" to depict himself in search of his identity in children's pictures. He uses photographs as an impulse to discover unexpected aspects of himself in the painting process through altered compositions and details of content and colour.
Benigno Alba Valdés deals with the themes of illness, pain, healing and the strength that comes from family and one's own roots.
Evgenia Shepeleva focuses on memories and dreams. She is strongly inspired by Slavic culture, in which textile art plays an important role.
Sofiia Kozoriz works in various media to convey mixed feelings about the war in her Ukrainian homeland - moments of homeland loss.
Sevilay Hannas unfolds a world of fragility, vulnerability, beauty and ugliness.
Leon Habelt creates a world as a stage and human behaviour as a play. Figures and objects appear in indeterminate spaces, which stand in unclear relationships to one another and seem to exist in isolation.
Helge Hossfeld deals with the aesthetics of ugliness and shows excerpts from the world of photographic and/or intellectual models.
Julija Kalinova touches on the themes of religion and home in her paintings.
Bastian Maria Meindl combines spiritual and interreligious approaches with contemporary pop culture.
Anna Wandaller explores symbols of culture, customs and naturalness in both painting and sculpture.
Kun Su paints interiors in correspondence with Diego Velazquez, Hans Memling, Jan Vermeer and influenced by their Old Masters.
Finally, there are decidedly political and socio-political topics:
Ilvie Schlotfeldt addresses the abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising in 2022 in a multimedia work.
Lisa Bahushevskaya is involved in the Belarusian protest movement against ruler Aleksandr Lukashenko. She took an active part in the protest marches in Minsk against the rigged presidential elections in 2020. One of her contributions to the PINXIT exhibition is her work Escape about the Bialowieża Forest between Belarus and Poland. Since the end of 2021, this has become a dangerous refugee route between Poland and Belarus for numerous migrants hoping to cross the border into the EU.
Panni Somody deals with past and present traditions and political events, particularly in her native Hungary. Artistically, she moves between visual and performative art.
This brings me to the end of my remarks. As you can see, the PINXIT exhibition is contemporary and definitely orientated towards crisis and conflict, but it definitely wants to be viewed and assessed under the formal criteria of painting.
