Amelie von Wulffen, Jonas Lipps
Opening of the exhibitions: September 25, 6–9 pm
It is now two years since Amelie von Wulffen wrote her text ‘Under the Poodle’s Skin’, in which she examined her most recent paintings in the context both of depressing turns in world events, and the ‘dynamics of her dysfunctional family’. She described how she was being increasingly drawn towards realism, and raised the question of whether the New Objectivity movement of the 1930s, driven by an urge to paint everyday objects such as glasses of water, arose from the same sense of anxiety and unease that we are currently experiencing. Today, although everything still seems intact and in place, a pervasive sense of dread persists. In the text, von Wulffen explores an essential element in many of her paintings, one that demonstrates a complex interaction of different levels of perception and representation. Things observed and invented are overlaid with dream and memory before being expressed in painting, which itself has its own way of constructing reality. At the same time, in the cracks of her dense and fragmented stories there lurks a repressed knowledge.
Sometimes it is only by deliberately absenting himself that Jonas Lipps can allow his paintings to come into being. He abandons a situation that has become normality, and imagines another. His studio is transformed into an office or a classroom, and his table becomes a desk, at which he sits hunched over an exercise. In some of his pictures, he invents the person who has given him this exercise. Such a readiness to absent oneself from oneself, that is, to stop being the person you think you are, can be a precondition to making art that accesses the unknown. Since Lipps is not exactly inclined to make things easy for himself, the process is even more complex. The playful act of expanding to become someone else also involves placing oneself under a constraint.
Curated by Valérie Knoll
The exhibition is accompanied by an eighty-page book of Amelie von Wulffen’s drawings from the last ten years, none of which have been seen before. The publication will be available for purchase for 20,- € during opening hours at the Kölnischer Kunstverein or can be ordered via the website from 26 September.
As part of the exhibition, editions by Amelie von Wulffen and Jonas Lipps are published and also available for purchase online.
The dates for public guided tours of the exhibition can be found in our calendar.
Admission to the exhibition and events is free, registration is not required.
The exhibition will be open regularly on All Saints’ Day (Allerheiligen, 1 November), but will be closed on 11 November.
The exhibition is supported by:
