In 2020 the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz are celebrating their 100th anniversary as a public art institution. What is more, this year also marks the 160th anniversary of the foundation of the Kunsthütte zu Chemnitz, the civic art association whose collecting activities laid the foundations for the museum. On the occasion of this dual anniversary, an exhibition involving the whole museum building will show a representative selection from the extensive holdings of the Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz, the ...
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Be it in the form of public holidays, religious festivals, or private parties, celebration shapes our lives and structures the passage of time. Celebrating customary rituals renews an individual’s bond to the community. Sometimes, however, celebrations can seem menacing, particularly to those who are not part of them. Does overcelebration obscure reality and cause society as a whole to decay – in an incessant whitewash and a state of euphoria? Does celebration separate us or ...
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Thomas Ranft’s portfolio works are legendary, consisting of series of fine, light, swirling works on paper. They arouse the interest of museums and private collectors alike. What subject would thus fit this lightness better than the sensitive language of poetry? It is no wonder Ranft finds his inspiration in the great poets whose works focus on Germanlanguage word play, for example, Ernst Jandl or Friedrich Hölderlin. And this time Rainer Maria Rilke. Ranft has recently ...
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For the first time, Chemnitz will be the scene of an international public art project in summer 2020. Twenty renowned artists and collectives are invited to engage with the city, its history and society, and to develop site-specific works – interventions and sculp-tures, installations and performances – in public spaces.
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The summer exhibition in the Museum Gunzenhauser is dedicated to the depiction of man in the work of artists in the collection as well as in a contemporary position. Under the title All Too Human (Allzumenschliches), paintings and graphics by Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, Georg Schrimpf and others will be on view. These are combined with works by Sebastian Gögel (b. 1978), whose artistic view, too, is directed to where tragedy and comedy ...
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Among the most valuable pieces of church furnishings are the vasa sacra, or sacred vessels, used to celebrate religious services and administer the sacraments. These objects were normally of elaborate design and made using precious materials. The decoration and inscriptions offer viewers insights into the spiritual world and daily life of the citizens who once donated these pieces. Over the course of centuries, many churches accumulated rich treasures of vessels, chalices, ornamental boxes and bowls, ...
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Through his art installations, Olaf Nicolai has engaged in artistic research since the 1990s into the aesthetic relationship between nature and culture, its interferences, and the related associated processes of perception and their influences on our society. His multi-part textile work Yeux de Paon (Peacock Eyes) reveals his interest in using the decorative patterns typical of traditional ceramics from Bulgaria. He had the peacock-eye forms transferred to lengths of textile, with the newly created patterns ...
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Artists of different generations and origins on all continents are eager to engage with material, with new textiles and image-support materials. Curtains, wallpapers, and carpets are being rediscovered as image carriers for contemporary depictions. Fabrics, textile décor, and clothing can be used to narrate anew stories, the backdrops of historical, pictorial, and global relations. Here, the rediscovery of traditional techniques is confronted with the enthusiasm for new digital technologies: smart clothing, wearables, social fabrics, robot ...
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Performance, provocation, breaking of taboos, violence – there is no equivalent to the 1960s works of the artist-duo Uwe Lausen (1941–1970) and Heide Stolz (1939–1985). The works were created in a period characterised by considerable upheaval and radical change, and in which a new generation reckons with traditional conventions with an unprecedented degree of vehemence. The photographs by Stolz and the works on canvas and paper by Lausen tell of the individual’s role in the ...
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There is a world-famous collection of early Italian paintings in Germany, which – in addition to the large and well-known collections of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Old Masters of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin – is one of the largest and most beautiful European collections of early Italian art outside Italy. It is the collection of the philanthropist and politician Bernhard August von Lindenau, which today forms the heart ...
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