28. November 2015 – 17. Januar 2016 

Bahnwärterhaus:

Under Construction

Eröffnung: Freitag, 27. November, 19 Uhr

Valentino Biagio Berndt, Elsa Farbos, JAK, Alberto Zamora Ruiz

Under Construction ist eine zweiteilige Ausstellungsreihe, die das Bahnwärterhaus als Plattform für junge, internationale Künstler nutzt. Der Titel Under Construction steht für einen nicht abgeschlossenen Prozess. Die Arbeiten sind offene Konstruktionen, die weiter fortführbar sind.

Die ausgewählten Künstler verbindet, dass ihr Lebensmittelpunkt sich zur Zeit in der Region Stuttgart befindet. Der aktuelle Lebens- oder Studienort ist jedoch nur ein Teil der Gesamtkonstruktion. Verbindungen zu anderen, auch virtuellen Orten, Hinweise in die Zukunft und in die Vergangenheit öffnen sich durch die Arbeiten. Es zeichnen sich eigenwillige und sehr unterschiedliche Entwicklungen ab.

Vier Positionen bilden den Auftakt im ersten Teil der Reihe

Ein selbst entwickeltes Straßenfahrzeug von Valentino Biagio Berndt (*1988, Cuernavaca, Mexiko) erscheint wie der Prototyp für eine neue Trendsportart. Scheinbar mühelos bewegt sich das Gefährt zwischen realem und digitalem Raum.

Ebenso führen die Malereien von Alberto Zamora Ruiz (*1982, Mexico City) den Betrachter in die digitale Welt. Unterschiedliche Szenarien aus Internetmaterial verbinden sich zu einer neuen, offenen Erzählung. Wie die Skizzen eines Storyboards fügen sich die Bilder in einem größeren Kontext zu mehreren, immer wieder neuen Geschichten zusammen.

12 September – 15 November 2015

Better than de Kooning

Opening: 11 September, 7:00 p.m.

With works by Peter Saul, Lee Lozano, Maria Lassnig, Michel Majerus, Dieter Krieg, Tim Berresheim, Jana Euler, Katrin Plavčak, Jon Rafman, Gunter Reski, Matthias Schaufler, Jim Shaw, Amy Sillman, Sue Williams

The Villa Merkel, Galerien der Stadt Esslingen am Neckar, is presenting in the autumn of 2015 an extensive painting exhibition that directs its focus toward the depiction of distortions in the human image in postmodernism. The process of the de- and reconstruction of the naturalistic image of the human being was one of the major driving forces in the development of painting in the twentieth century and, in the framework of the digital era, is picking up speed once again. The title of the exhibition, Better than de Kooning, refers to the same-named work created in 2008 by the American artist Peter Saul who, with his concept of painting-appropriation, which is nourished both by Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism as well as by underground comics and political caricature, developed an innovative politpop painting style. The exhibition presents works by fourteen artists of European and American provenance over several generations who operate in terms of both form and contents between a conceptual reception of painting and an investigation of influences from the mass media.

12. September 2015 – 15. November 2015

Jeanne Faust – 7 dealers

Opening: Friday, 11 September, 7pm

In her videos and photographs, Jeanne Faust plays with various perceptual levels of the viewer. The fundamentally narrational approach of her cineastic pictorial spaces initially gives rise to a supposedly familiar narrative structure which, however, is continuously disrupted. The fragments of image, text and action in her works are based on storyboards that she constructs herself and on carefully planned scenes that she realizes under her own direction.

27 June - 23 August 2015

Les Frères Chapuisat

Excrescence of Immortality

Interactive Construction Phase with Special Programs: from 21 May 2015

Opening: Friday 26 June, 7:00 p.m.

From a biological point of view, mushrooms are neither plants nor animals. They constitute their own third category. From time immemorial, they have been organisms with a mysterious aura, yet their existence is an everyday and indispensable occurrence in a flourishing ecosystem.

Les Frères Chapuisat have made an approach to the essence of mushrooms. Under the title Excrescence of Immortality, which refers to the primal power of these special organisms, Les Frères Chapuisat are appropriating the Villa Merkel. An architectural structure will spread throughout the ground floor of the Villa Merkel and serve as a living space for artists and fungi.

In its construction, this structure resembles the architecture of a monastery or a temple. Divided into social, contemplative and informative units, actual spatial structures are combined with narrative elements. This generates an independent organism into which the visitor is incorporated. An integrated library, a cinema and spaces of encounter provide insights into the significance and potentialities of the construction.

27 June - 23 August 2015

Guest contributions on the upper floor

The exhibition “Excrescence of Immortality” functions like an organic structure that constantly grows further and is open to external impulses. The process is accordingly accompied by two additional, independent postions that take up the theme.

Stephan Henrich“The Fungus Project — On Robotic Gardeners and vertical Scrubs” 

The architect Stephan Henrich created a living compound material out of oyster-mushroom mycelia and straw. With the help of a robotic gardener that he developed himself the natural organism is erected in a wall-like structure. The Fungus Project investigates reciprocal relationships between architecture, nature, human beings and robotic machines that can be used for supporting architectural processes. The Fungus Project was realized in the framework of a research fellowship at Schloss Solitude 2010/2011.

14 March – 17 May 2015

Hunters & Gatherers

In Contemporary Art

Opening: Friday, 13 March 2015, 7 pm

David Chancellor, Henry Coombes, Sinje Dillenkofer, Mark Dion, Daniel & Geo Fuchs, Christian Gonzenbach, Roderick Hietbrink, Carsten Höller, Christian Jankowski, Claus Kienle, William Lamson, Isa Melsheimer, Guy Oberson, Simona Pries, Glen Rubsamen, Erik Schmidt, Andreas Slominski, TINKEBELL, Francis Zeischegg

The days when we used to range through the wilds of the old world as hunter-gatherers looking for something edible are long gone. But is that chapter in the history of mankind really closed? Aren’t the hunting instinct and a passion for collecting still motors driving human deeds? How much of the ‘hunter-gatherer’ remains within us is a question asked by contemporary artists such as Christian Jankowski, who, in his video performance The Hunt, slays his prey with a bow and arrow in the supermarket.

Hunting and gathering – as two elementary cultural techniques, as two ways of approaching and appropriating nature – are still closely intertwined. As he hoards slayed animals as trophies, the hunter becomes a collector, and as the collector searches

Debut exhibition at the Bahnwärterhaus

14 March – 19 April 2015

YASMIN SENKAL

I AM DEATH

Opening: Friday, 13 March 2015, 7 pm

Debut exhibition at the Bahnwärterhaus

24 January – 1 March 2015 

Ülkü Süngün

Opening: Friday, 23 January 2015, 7 pm

13 December 2014  – 22 February 2015

Mathieu Mercier

everything but the kitchen sink

Opening: Friday, 12 December 2014, 7 pm

Lamps, furniture, bicycles, letter presses, museum pedestals: Mathieu Mercier's artistic output moves back and forth in a masterly manner between the categories of art and everyday culture. Situated within the dynamic field of architecture, design, and the visual arts, it reflects upon the fundamental ideas of Western culture in the twentieth century, especially the concept of Modernism.

Again and again, he refers back to the artistic avant-garde, to heroes such as Marcel Duchamp or Piet Mondrian, and establishes connections with their gestures and pictorial inventions by means of deliberate displacements of apparently ordinary objects from the contemporary world. In a permanent exchange between high and low, Mercier enigmatically poses the question as to the status of objects

12 October 2014 – 11 January  2015

Obsessions and Surreal Worlds

Works from the Prints Collection of the City of Esslingen am Neckar

Bahnwärterhaus

Opening: Sunday, 12 October 2014, 11 am

Bringing the subconscious onto paper and designing ambiguous, surreal pictorial worlds: The Galleries of the City of Esslingen present in the Bahnwärterhaus a cross-section of drawings, prints, and photographs from the Prints Collection of the City of Esslingen am Neckar. Right up to today, the artistic investigation of reality sometimes crosses over into the realm of the surreal or the obsessive.

The exhibition probes the fantastical worlds situated between reality and dream. Whether irrational or mystical, obsessive or dreamy, neurotic or provocative—the artistic attitudes are due to pointed approaches. Works from the twentieth century, e.g. by Hans Bellmer, Lovis Corinth or Wols, come into relation with current positions of international contemporary art such as those of Damien Deroubaix, Michael Bauer, or Melanie Smith.