A joint exhibition held in three museums in Hanover demonstrates how artists are working in Germany today. The show focuses on the current conditions of art production in the country.
Image: Hito Steyerl
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Art production 'Made in Germany'
A joint exhibition held in three museums in Hanover depicts how artists are working in Germany today. The show focuses on the current conditions of art production in the country.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Art whistling international winds
The installation "Meatus" (Latin for "path") by the artist collective Das Numen is made of five organ pipes. They are connected via the internet to 20 weather stations around the world. The wind's direction and strength is transmitted in real-time sounds. Like Numen, many artists work on network-based international projects.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Art and nothing but the truth
Artist Timur Si-Qin lives in Berlin and is about to move to New York. His installation in the exhibition "Produktion. Made in Germany Drei" in Hanover is a reflective work. It shows symbols of a new fictional religion that aims to save the world. The title of the work is "Is it true there is no such thing as truth?"
Image: DW/S. Dege
Dialogue of the sculptures
The Greek artist Yorgos Sapountzis also lives and works in Berlin. For his installation "Naked Heritage: We Need You All," he selected sculptures from the Sprengel Museum's collection and placed them on a stage, surrounding them with colorful paths of fabric. The installation makes art history alive.
Image: DW/S. Dege
In tow in Uterusland
After being diagnosed with cancer, Raphaela Vogel faced pain, suffering - and hope. Her installation "Uterusland" deals with health care and birth. The torso of a horse - the heraldic animal of Lower Saxony - is towing a sculpture of a huge open breast.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Playing with space
Blue pigment powder covers the stone floor of the Kunstverein in Schirin Kretschmann's work "Physical." The artist also had skylights installed. Now the hall is flooded with light, creating changing patterns on the white walls. The artist's work plays with the potential of the space.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Art made with a 3D printer
A visitor is marveling at what looks like an Antique Roman marble sculpture. The work is, however, a reflection on the ways art can be reproduced with a computer and how this impacts the artist's authorship. With his 3D-printed plastic reproductions, the Berlin-based Austrian artist Oliver Laric offers his own statement on these questions.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Artwork from a flower store
This monumental bouquet in the historic stairway of Hanover's Kunstverein is like a floral sculpture. The work by Berlin-based Dutch artist Willem de Rooij, called "Bouquet IX," is kept permanently fresh to hide any signs of wilting. The artist explores the concepts of individualism and community in his works.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Consumption and eco-catastrophe
Veit Laurent Kurz has an ironic take on architecture, design and nature with his installation "RElife." The room, filled with home-made furniture overgrown with plants, is also inhabited by witch-like creatures sitting on the floor or on stylized armchairs. Unbridled consumption and imminent climate catastrophe are two sides of the same coin for the artist.
Image: DW/S. Dege
Foreign world
Screens, video projections, pictures: The duo of artists Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho do not stage their own art in this work, but rather international imagery. The installation called "oder" (or) features people from all over the world, showing colorful activities in Sicily, grey workmen in China, bankers in Singapore or call-center employees in Manila.
Image: DW/S. Dege
A concrete snowman
Daniel Knorr built a concrete snowman just across the Kestnergesellschaft museum's building. "Bonhomme" is a metaphor for transience, as well as a symbol for climate change. The exhibition "Produktion. Made in Germany Drei" is now on show through September 3, 2017 in the Kestnergesellschaft, the Kunstverein and the Sprengel Museum in Hanover.
Image: DW/S. Dege
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Just an hour's drive away from the famous contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, the Documenta, another world-class exhibition organized in a five-year-cycle takes place this year in Hanover.
The third edition of the exhibition series "Made in Germany," jointly shown at the Sprenger Museum, the Kunstverein and the Kestner Gesellschft in Hanover, focuses on such questions as how artists work in Germany today and how a strong concentration of universities, art schools and cultural institutions influence art production.
No restrictive definition of 'German art'
The result provides an inventory and an overall impression of the world's newest art.
One of the trends identified by Carina Plath, vice-director of the Sprengel Museum, is that "art is now more strongly being created through collective processes," she says.
Artists also tend to include a reflection on the spaces of creation and exhibition in their works, she explains.
The exhibition intentionally avoids trying to provide a definition of German art and features many international artists.
The Berlin-based Greek artist Yorgos Sapountzis has included sculptures from the collection of the Sprengel Museum in his installation. "I am creating a dialogue between artworks from different periods," he explains. His work is called "Naked Heritage. We Need You All."
A work by Willem de Rooij on show at the exhibition "Produktion. Made in Germany Drei"Image: Willem de Rooij
The artist Schirin Kretschmann has covered the floor with blue pigments and taken down the suspended ceiling to add light to her work, called "Physical," influencing the exhibition space itself.
The Berlin collective "Das Numen" offers a sound installation that is connected to the wind data of 20 weather stations worldwide.
The German-American artist Timur Si Quin has created promotional posters for a new religion whose myths aim to overcome the world's cataclysmic changes.
Renowned artists working in Germany
The exhibition also features renowned names such as Julius von Bismarck, Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho, Hito Steyerl, the Dutch conceptual artist Willem de Rooij and the photographer Thomas Ruff.
"Made in Germany" has become an international seal of quality, and this applies to this exhibition as well. The selected artists mainly work in Germany, but they all have strong international ties. Many of them work in networks and collectives.
More and more artists are crossing their medium's borders by integrating theater, performance and music in their works. The growing flow of goods in a globalized and digitized world also has its impact on the arts.
