Dem Wasser folgen

A new look at the element

Water is highly indifferent. On the one hand, it is omnipresent, the source of all life and thus intimately linked to existence in all its dimensions. On the other hand, it has no fixed form, no specific colour or smell of its own; it has countless manifestations and eludes being pinned down to a single meaning and thus a definitive form of determination. It stands in relation to its surroundings, makes up our blue planet and our own body, it connects as a trade route and separates as a border, it serves for cleansing or recreation and is at the same time dangerous, a potential place of misfortune. It symbolises spiritual forces and mutates into a hard-fought commodity in times of neoliberal economic systems. Finally, water as a resource refers to the most urgent social issue of the 21st century: the climate crisis. At the same time, the special nature of this theme has opened up new perspectives on the Kunsthalle Bielefeld's own collection for the curators, thus providing points of reference for current global and social debates. The theme of water leads to complex questions concerning culture, nature, politics, economy, body and mind and is therefore highly topical and omnipresent as the subject of multifaceted, international curatorial, artistic and scientific projects. The observation that an unusually large number of works in the Kunsthalle's collection take up the element of water thematically not only makes it clear that the subject is attractive to artists with a wide variety of formal and narrative approaches. However, an important impulse for the exhibition and book came from the US artist Roni Horn and her work "Saying Water" (2012). In it, she conducts a monologue about water and makes us realise that we all mean something different when we talk about water. In this way, her important work has paved the way for the Follow the Water exhibition and provided a new perspective on the element:
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 4/6 - 16/10/2022

Artists:
Katinka Bock, Carolina Caycedo, Lovis Corinth, Catherina Cramer & Giulietta Ockenfuß, Ludwig Dill, Karl Ellermann, Max Ernst, Lyonel Feininger, Conrad Felixmüller, Hermann Freudenau, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Hella Guth, Franz Hecker, Klara Hobza, Ferdinand Hodler, Ludwig von Hofmann, Roni Horn, Axel Kasseböhmer, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Manguin, Anton Melbye, Otto Modersohn, Gabriele Münter, Kenneth Noland, Adrian Paci, Enrique Ramírez, Ernst Sagewka, Robert Smithson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Heinrich Vogeler and many more. and many more.

Exhibition:
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 4/6 - 16/10/2022