UNION Gallery is pleased to host the group exhibition The Way Things Are (Nach Lage der Dinge) presenting work from Loris – Gallery of Contemporary Art, Berlin.
Along the works of the Loris artists the group exhibition sounds out the way things are. The exhibition includes aspects of greatest diversity ranging from the world of the private, via the archive, to public space and landscape. The exhibition provides an overview of working methods and interest spheres of the participating artists, and thus attempts a stock taking of the present.
Ruth Hommelsheim and Julia Müller work at an access to the image worlds of the private. While Hommelsheim in her work Versammlungen (Assemblies) sets free pictures from the family archive by painting them over, thus directing the viewer’s concentration toward facial expression and gesture, Julia Müller puts together movie images from private family archives found at flea markets. In Views the artist analyzes the topics of these vacation films and presents them assembled to loops to the audience. Werner Huthmacher with his black-and white photographs titled Usedom follows up distant childhood memories.
Ulrike Hannemann takes as a theme the archive of her own works by rearranging small-sized test prints and reproductions. In limited space a model of the artist’s working method emerges in miniaturized form. The operational mode of the collage finds expression in Sophie Aigner’s work. Es gibt keinen Ausschluss (There is no Exclusion) deals with the relation between subjectivity and objectification of the individual as a fragile entity within socio-medial systems, longs for accomplishing life.
Andy Heller in the work CA 93428 investigates collections of objects found in public space and, with the medium of photography, reads the traces of the everyday. The localization of urban space is central to the work Undetermined Terrain by Bettina Lockemann. In Turkish metropolitan areas the artist examines use of urban space wedged between shopping malls and informal developments.
Landscape, finally, is the theme of the works by Ulrike Kolb. In o.T. Landschaften (Untitled -Landscapes) the viewer is confronted with the intense beauty of magnificent landscapes while the small-sized pictures on the other hand reveal intrusions by civilization.
The Way Things Are introduces the viewer to a panorama of themes and working approaches that represent an excerpt from the idea of the present.