The class of Professors Wermers/Karstiess /Prangenberg

bis 13. Dezember 2019

The third exhibition in the series KollerNOW will feature work by students from the sculpture class of Prof. Nicole Wermers as well as graduates of Prof. Karstiess and Prof. Prangenberg: Sonja Allgaier, Thomas Breitenfeld, Daniel Huss and Keiyona Stumpf. The diverse materials used – wood, bronze, ceramic, glass and photography – reveal the creative potential of the sculpture class. Here haptic allure prevails as much as spatial aspects. The virtuoso struggle for natural and artistic creation is reflected in all the works.

The works of Sonja Allgaier (*1978) entrance the viewer at first glance with their interplay between the religious associations of the gold ground and the sheer reality of photography. Her installation-based presentation sets out an attentive examination of our perception of reality and the structures underlying it. How do change, the balance of power and the claim to truth manifest themselves in our society? 

Thomas Breitenfeld's (*1983) primary material is wood, which allows the transformative process of his working method to be made visible. The amorphous forms of the wooden sculptures, which emerge dynamically from the wall or the floor, are created in harmony with the material. Breitenfeld repeatedly tests the limits of the material and its nature as a driving force for the creative process. His works in bronze are also fascinating for the intrinsic visible properties of the material, and the element of chance inherent to the creative process.

The artist and musician Daniel Huss (*1986) creates his charismatic figures from various elements and allows them to grow and develop, so that controlled chance plays a major role. Gesso, wood or glass serve as structural bodies, so that the raw materiality often forms a tense counterpoint between the cartoonish form and the loud gloss surface.

Keiyona Stumpf's (*1982) sculptures and reliefs fascinate with their creative play of great complexity. In her formal language she seizes the rampant, organic vitality of nature and captures it in an ornamental net of flowing transitions, lustrous glazes and convoluted intervals of space. From her works in porcelain, ceramic and glass emerge associative memories of organic forms, microstructures and mythical creatures. Nature and culture struggle for dominance in the space, so that the viewer is constantly drawn into this undecided dynamic duel.

The class of Prof. Kneffel

19 June – 19 July 2019

In this exhibition, works by 6 artists from the class of Prof. Karin Kneffel are presented in relation to one another: the student Andrej Auch and six graduates: Andrej Auch, Jenny Forster, Stefanie Hofer, Steffen Kern, Felix Rehfeld and Martin Spengler. Fully committed to the painterly element, the artists each play with their respective techniques - painting, drawing, relief, aquatint etching – with the polarisation of reality and illusion, natural and cultural space, the second and third dimensions.

In his paintings Andrej Auch (*1995) deals with the relationship between the object and its representation, or its translation in painterly form with the brush on the surface. Painting serves thereby as a filter. The canvas functions as an experimental field on which the artist interweaves his pictorial spaces in countless painterly layers of acrylic paint.

Jenny Forster's (*1979) major theme is controlled chance and the possibilities of association that arise in that state of suspension between abstraction and representational art. She is represented at KollerNOW with two series of works: “Mirror” and “Manifestations”. A virtuoso of colour, she pays with the materials and techniques. Where abstract-looking colour surfaces overlap, there new pictorial spaces are opened up to the viewer, be they real or fictitious.

In her works Stefanie Hofer (*1974) deals intensively with people and nature, nature and culture and their mutual interactions. For Stefanie Hofer this can be explored especially well in the phenomenon of landscape gardens. Art, nature and philosophy enter into a unique connection, which Hofer reflects in her aquatint etchings through their fine play of light and shade, depth and romantic appropriation.

From a distance, Steffen Kern's (*1988) works look like photographs or film stills, and only on closer observation do the meticulously executed charcoal pencil drawings reveal themselves, which consciously play with the aesthetic of the photograph. His pictures are based, however, not on real models but are what are known as “Meta-images”, drawn from the pool of our collective memory of images. This shift between reality and fiction is what makes his works on paper so fascinating.

Felix Rehfeld's (*1981) artistic interest lies with colour, be it the application, expression, form or effect, colour knows no boundaries. His theme is the surface or the play on surface, deception or reality, illusion or actuality? Three-dimensionality, or the surface arrested, sculpture or painting? Such questions cannot be avoided when looking at his work.

The basis of Martin Spengler's (*1974) art is his concern with the medium of relief, which as an art form occupies a position between painting and sculpture. His material is seemingly worthless corrugated cardboard, his motifs are buildings, churches, motorway junctions and urban landscapes, with which he explores questions of compression, structure and functionality and illuminates the relationship between cultural and natural space.

The class of Prof. Oehlen

14 March – 12 April 2019

For this first exhibition, Koller invited Marc Avrel, Ralf Dereich, Daniel Man and Lina Augustin – graduates and students under Professor Markus Oehlen. With a heightened encounter between the most diverse concepts of painting, sculpture and drawing, these four young artists engaged in a temporary dialogue. 

Marc Avrel's (*1981) understanding of crossover decisively influences his life and his artworks. Highly radical and passionate, he blurs the boundaries of the artistic disciplines. He challenges, comments and reflects on current political, social, digital and artistic developments.

Ralf Dereich's (*1976) works are the product of a spontaneous and subtle process. Inherently artistic, and restricting himself to painting and sculpture, the artist has developed a pictorial language, which is both universal and unique. His works open up new pictorial spaces and, through their complexity and impulsivity, keep the viewer in a constant state of flux.

Daniel Man (*1969) comes from the graffiti scene, and his works still bear the hallmark of street art. Man's intensely coloured and pulsating works are now favourably received not only in urban settings, but also in the museum world.

Lina Augustin's (*1986) works persuasively combine intensive images with a simple and thereby vivid language. Poetic visual worlds, working in harmony with Augustin's texts, open up for the viewer the possibility of constructing a story of their own imagining.