Galerie Crystal Ball

Vernissage with performance on Friday, September, 1st, 7 p.m.

Exhibition to Sun. 15th Sept. 2023
Tue. & Fri.: 2 p.m. - 7 p.m., Fri.
and by appointment

With her performance “Song of the Great Disappointed” Veronika Dobers satirically addresses the position of man as the supposedly highest evolved living being. The creator of the world, however, doubts his work, which should culminate in the creation of man. (V.D.)

The artist friends Sigrun Paulsen and Manfred Kirschner, alias Lydia Karstadt, set their quite opposing artistic positions in an exhibition performatively against and with each other and examine the effects as in a collision. It is interesting that especially with this strategy similarities and relationships in common areas become visible, which otherwise would have remained invisible and perhaps would not have emerged. Sigrun Paulsen’s work is dedicated to pure color and its effects, she is concerned with a clarity and musicality also in the reception. In medium and large format works on canvas, Paulsen skillfully explores the combinatorial effects of her self-mixed colors and counter colors, cold and warm hues, which she brings together in deliberate processes. These color combinations thereby bring her paintings into vibration, the colors seem to vibrate. Paulsen’s paintings are free, free of inscribed meaning, nothing is hidden or suggested. They have something pure and are like food for the senses, which one can accept or refuse.

Manfred Kirschner explores in his smaller collages on canvas, irritating strategies of seemingly harmonious subject combinations. He places his protagonists, mostly mannequins, which certainly represent us humans, in melancholic landscapes or historical photographs, as in or historical photographs, as if in film sets and stage sets. The collage knows per se the combination of opposites as a stylistic principle. Kirschner’s art, however, works beyond this with the harmonization of the parts of the picture, such as the adherence to color spatiality or a combination of colors. Very often in Kirschner’s work, as for example in the in Kirschner’s series “The Story Of Blue, Red And Yellow”, for example, the figures are figures stand out from their background in a certain colorfulness, as if they were as if they were displaying themselves in their new pictorial world and also sayingsaying, “Look! I’ve been pasted in here!” Thus, just combinations raise unusual questions, or ironically expand the traditional or ironically expand the traditional lines of vision. Kirschner’spictures seem to draw their lightness from the fact that they are
their own statements at their fractures and distortions, asserting themselves as if they were assert themselves, as if they were above these receptionist processes.
Very often in Kirschner’s work, as for example in the titular series “The Story Of Blue, Red And Yellow,” the figures stand out from their background in a certain colorfulness, as if they were displaying themselves in their new pictorial world and also saying: “Look! I’ve been pasted in here!” Thus, it is these humorous to dramatic combinations that raise unusual questions or ironically expand traditional lines of vision. Kirschner’s paintings seem to draw their lightness from the fact that they make their own statements at their fractures and fault lines, asserting themselves as if they were above these receptionist processes. They free themselves from and the artist from authorship. Thus, if one sees Paulsen’s and Kirschner’s positions side by side, I maintain that both are about an essentiality that is evoked through a harmonization of opposites and polar effects and, beyond that, about a philosophy of freedom with art- Renate Kemper, Berlin 2023