Wilhelm-Hack-Museum – författare

A book as artistic creation: The artist Ulla von Brandenburg (b. 1974) creates multimedia works in a unique mixture of theatrical settings, object art,and performance. Boundaries between reality and illusion, interior and exterior, are blurred in her art as in this colour-saturated volume, which springs entirely from her own artistic vision.From films, textile works, dance, and song to literature, circus, and spiritualism – in the multifaceted work of Ulla von Brandenburg, the most diverse media pulsate together in a mode of theatrical expression. In doing so, she reflects on the conditions of human existence, whether as an individual or part of a group. This artists’ book offers a comprehensive overview of her work since 2018, including her latest piece developed especially for its presentation at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum.

With his mythical depictions of demons and fabulous creatures, the Austrian graphic artist and illustrator Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was an early representative of surrealism. Like other followers of this early 20th century movement, he rejected purely rational behaviour and explored the depths of the unconscious instead. In 1909, he published his novel The Other Side, (Die Andere Seite) a classic example of the fantastic genre that tells a cryptically absurd story of a dream kingdom in decline, replete with references to metaphysics and gnostic philosophy. Borrowing the novel's title, the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum has put on an exhibition showing early works by Alfred Kubin alongside outstanding examples of contemporary art. The exhibition is designed in a way that aims to stimulate the imagination, and to highlight hints of surrealism in international contemporary artworks. With works by: Thomas Feuerstein, Alfred Kubin, Henrique Oliveira, Hans Op de Beeck, Markus Schinwald, Stéphane Thidet and others.

Waldemar Zimbelmann surprises in his works with an unusual handling of material and technique, not least at the DELTABEBEN Regionale 2018 in the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum. Woodcut, oil and reverse glass painting form the material context from which he develops his mysterious ensemble of figures. Sometimes the grain of the wood provides the contours of a drawing, sometimes portraits, landscapes or interior-like sceneries emerge from the organic structure. In turn, Zimbelmann confronts the filigree line drawing with the decorative colourfulness of the two-dimensional reverse glass painting, the cut wood image with the artificial smoothness and brilliance of the glass. The artist subtly explores the interplay of supposed opposites in surrealistic-looking pictorial constructions and transfers them into a multi-layered pictorial language that brings forth its subject matter in an overlap of figuration and abstraction. In the staging of his works, which oscillate between proximity and distance, display and demarcation, Zimbelmann creates pictorial spaces for portraits of thoughts that reveal ambivalent interpersonal relationships.This catalogue is published to accompany the exhibition at the Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen.Text in English and German