Ulrike Groos - Böcker

Searching for the Face of a New Time Whether in the visual arts, literature, cinema, science or fashion–in the crises after World War I, the fascination with “types” was largely influenced by a debate that was pervasive in the Weimar period: the search for the “face of the era.” People were looking for new role models, and the portraits by artists of the New Objectivity movement such as Otto Dix, George Grosz, Jeanne Mammen and Hanna Nagel testify to this. Many of the clichéd images, such as those of the “new woman” or the “worker,” however, continue to have an effect in the present, reminding us with their classification of individuals of a problem that lives on in today’s bigotry. A broad spectrum of contributors from art history, medical history, media studies, and sociology venture into a detailed investigation of the historical context of the 1920s and the complex interactions between art and its time. An installation developed especially for the exhibition by contemporary artist Cemile Sahin, born in 1990, spans an arc to the present.

An extraordinary collection of texts and images compiled by Wolfgang Laib. Wolfgang Laib: The Beginning of Something Else combines texts that are particularly important for the artist’s creative work, together with a variety of selected images. Included are, for example, passages from the "Epic of Gilgamesh", a poem by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, and thoughts by Friedrich Nietzsche. The texts and images are combined to create an unusual publication, which reflects Wolfgang Laib’s (b. 1950) interest in literature as well as some of the most important sources of inspiration for his sensitive work. This collection reveals Wolfgang Laib in a subtle and personal way. It sheds light on an artist whose work, which dates back to the 1970s, has questioned our treatment of nature, and thus could not be more topical.