Welcome to the exhibition “The Soil We Live From” by curator Tom Albrecht at the opening on August 24, 2018
Guests at vernissage in front of picture by Clement Loisel. (C) T.A.
Our aim is to show the value of the soil, the life it contains, and its threatened existence.
Three artists Matthias Fritsch, Irene Hoppenberg, and Kirsten Wechslberger worked for four weeks at the Academy for Sufficiency in Prignitz, and their works are part of this exhibition. We are surprised by their productivity there.
I present the artists in alphabetical order.
Tom Albrecht will present after the artist talk on 14.9. in a collective dialogical action re-evaluate soils of guests. Dear guests, you are requested to bring a handful of soil from a location of your choice.
Ana Brotas from Portugal shows in her video a scientific “fragmented forest exercise” in which square areas of the forest are carefully cleaned.
Lioba von den Driesch uses modified children’s toys to show how Western industrial society relies on the global plundering of the soil.
The research group art created a symbol to represent the mystical-kinship connection between flora, fauna and the important resource earth.
Matthias Fritsch produced videos and furniture prototypes during the residency from salvaged, untreated materials, which lead to a more meaningful use of finite resources and closed material cycles. The top priority is the floor.
Stephan Groß His collage “The Skin of the Earth” shows a fragile, complex and fascinating ecosystem that is constantly restructuring itself. Like the largest organ of man, he sees soils as a central condition of our lives.
Regan Henley from USA finds a different approach to the floor. She aims to analyze and facilitate the practice of ritualized and planned grief work in her video in a “Guided Grief Session.” The objects flower and the ground serve as a reminder of the natural process of dying.
With her potato sculpture, Irene Hoppenberg shows the importance of the potato for us as a familiar, regional, tasty staple food.
Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb‘s photography, using Veronese green earth, points out that soil is the basis of life for food cultivation and should be treated with greater care. She is about to give respect to earth and soil as Mother Earth in her performance.
Maria Korporal In her interactive installation, the earth needs our breath to be fertile.
Clement Loisel His painting depicts the consequences of a toxic sludge disaster in Brazil as an open wound in the soil.
In his digitally processed photograph, Uwe Molkenthin establishes a relationship between humans, karstified soil, and the surface of a loaf of bread.
Annegret Müller, in her performance taking place today, views the earth as a gift from which we live and in which we trust.
Sabine Naumann-Cleve demonstrates in her zinc tub how fertile soil can be easily produced in any household by fermenting organic kitchen waste. In her object made from grave soil, she forms a cake that can also be seen as a gold bar.
Rieko Okuda will establish a relationship to the homeland, to the place of birth, in her audiovisual improvisation with Oliver Orthuber at the finissage.
Through his flower machine, Oliver Orthuber wants to bring out the aspect of technology that exploitively feeds on the soil and causes man both a curse and a blessing.
With her sculptures made of bioplastics and sand, Kirsten Wechslberger brings into our field of vision the soil creatures that are invisible to us humans.