REVIEW

Cut-outs and Silhouettes in Dialogue
6 July to 4 November 2018

The Exhibition that has been chosen to build a bridge into the world of contemporary art at the August Macke House Museum places a tradition-laden medium side by side with striking new interpretations by 16 contemporary artists. The new horizons charted by contemporary artists extend from tiny miniatures to room-filling installations, from simple black-white contrasts to color variation, from vegetal ornamentation to political statement. 

An opening prologue sets the spotlight on silhouette master and shadow artist Ernst Moritz Engert (1892–1986) and on animated-film pioneer Lotte Reiniger (1899–1981). Starting with the stark imagery of selected Expressionist works, including a never-before-shown collage by August Macke (1887–1914), the Exhibition becomes an exciting expedition into contemporary art.

Paper-cuts‘ particular suitability for expressing critical commentary is demonstrated by artists such as Felix Droese (*1950) and Annette Schröter (*1956). While Droese uses monumental outlines to cast the artistic treatment of critical inquiry in an ironic perspective, Annette Schröter grandstands motifs of Socialist Realism that have meanwhile degenerated into clichés. Violence and repression characterize the works of Tobias Gerber (*1961). Their appearance is harmless only at first glance. 

The interest of Anett Frontzek (*1965) focuses on classification systems such as nautical charts and land maps that were first developed to interpret the world around us but now stand as historical relics of the pre-digital age. Building on computer-generated forms, Lena von Goedeke (*1983) ultimately develops delicate landscape segments of surprising long-distance effect and spatial dimension.

From her series Relaxing Women, Zipora Rafaelov (*1954) for the first time shows three examples of lasciviously resting women. Marion Eichmann‘s (*1974) untamed colored paper cuts reflect today‘s world of consumption and living. For the Exhibition in Bonn she has created a location-specific variant of her Laundromat installation, a hyper-realistic self-service laundry. The Headhunters of Volker Saul (*1955) are also present in vivid colors: slight manipulations morph abstract forms into bizarre monsters. 

The contemporary term „cut out“ includes expansive installations. For the show in Bonn, Munich‘s Andreas Kocks (*1960) has put together a creation that engages in discourse with August Macke‘s ideas of paradise. Heike Weber (*1962) works with layered vegetal forms of impressive plasticity and has also created for the August Macke House Museum a wall-encompassing cut-out. The theme of nature also engages Bonn artist Cornelia Genschow (*1974). For her stencil graffiti she hunted for clues along the Rhine to find out where Macke painted his famous landscape Am Rhein bei Hersel (1908). 

Gabriele Basch‘s (*1964) large-format paper cuts, overworked with spray paint, generate an astonishing illusionistic chromatic echo while the cluster of small fluorescent knife-cuts by Hans Lankes (*1961) conquer the wall surface. Reduction to a single line is the subject of an extraordinary series by Martin Noël (*1956, †2010), shown for the first time. With characteristic precision, Katharina Hinsberg (*1967) is exhibiting fragile white paper-cuts with net-like structures and British Charlotte McGowan-Griffin (*1975), who lives in Berlin, is represented with her highly dynamic White Illinx.

Curator: Dr. Martina Padberg