Elisabeth Wagner - minimal pompous
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Opening: February 08, 2023, 6 pm
In her work as a professor of sculpture, Elisabeth Wagner has influenced and shaped generations of students for decades and guided them to become independent artists (including Hannah Bohnen, Regine Schulz, Oskar Schröder, Nikolai Renée Goldmann).
The solo exhibition minimal pompous now marks a farewell and dares to take a retrospective look at Elisabeth Wagner’s artistic oeuvre. Works from more than four decades are arranged side by side in direct exchange, and an attempt is made to work out fundamental sculptural approaches and ironic breaks with conventions in the work of Elisabeth Wagner.
The two adjectives minimal pompous lead us (un)intentionally astray and rather open up a spectrum; they illustrate the futile attempt to characterise in one title an artistic position that has developed over decades. Elisabeth Wagner’s art oscillates between reduction to the minimal - without being satisfied, mathematically or analytically, with the form - and the desire for playfulness, for sweeping, opulent gestures.
The exhibition is conceptually embedded in the annual theme Materialsache - What about ....?! It focuses on the medium of sculpture and approaches in detail the question of what contemporary sculpture is, using an artistic position as an example. The claim is neither that of a definition nor that of universality. Rather, it is about the fact that a conclusive categorisation eludes us due to ever new artistic updates and additions.
The exhibition Irrlichter by the Wagner class will take place at the same time, at Flämisch Straße 6-10 and not far from the spce. It is understood as a dialogue and raises a fundamental question in relation to art colleges: How does the artistic practice of professors affect the artistic self-image of their students? Can parallels/quotations be recognised, discursive allusions derived, or is there even a deliberate demarcation? And thus the concept of what sculpture is, is constantly being rewritten.