The title of the exhibition perplex addresses the viewer: in each work he may find various allusions and suggestions and may try to untangle these complex connections; he may find himself rearranging this unexpectedly emerging complexity in order to construct a meaningful and unified scenario It might seem bewildering that this peculiar complexity does not show up in a variety of visible forms and components, but rather continues to develop in our imaginaton despite few reference and thus cannot be completely decoded. The exhibition perplex deals with the topic, how complex the individual work is in its effect and possible meaning. Additionally the exhibition addresses the phenomenon that the presented artistic oevres are complex at all. The xehibition is concerned with the artistic strategies to reach this special - expansive - complexity.

Christoph Bangert paints geometrical structures. The preparatory drawings of his pictures are loops he calculates with a computer program. The painting itself is carried out traditionally in a glaze technique. He patiently paints the edges of the interior areas out of focus in layers: the geometrical structures promise the comprehensible logic of a simple order which the viewer can never see though, because he sees different pictorial spaces which slowly appear and – as soon as he tries to fix an impression – disappear: room for yet another view.

Like a sculptor Marcel Bleeck builds a sculpture using identical stacking chairs: it is his ambition to have the sculpture rest on one chair only. But working on this gets him into ever more difficulties with balance. Equilibrum and harmony are traditional standards of composition in the visual arts, especially in sculpture and painting. At some point Bleeck fails and the sculpture collapses: end of the video work. Thus failure is likewise thematized as an artistic quality.

Franziska Frey adopts the architectonic realities of the always special exhibition spaces and pursues them in thought - shapes them, that is – in the form of wall drawings. The angularity of the floor tiles with respect to the walls, which have not been built rectangularly into the room, for instance attracts attention and becomes part of a comprehensive spatial structure in drawing. The area of the two-dimensional drawing within the three-dimensional space remains ambiguous. The drawing itself is notched into the wall for real.

Agata Gostkowska and Leif Schmidt show a video work: a narrow stairwell filmed from a bird’s eye view with two persons (the authors) carrying objects upstairs or downstairs: neither the rhythm nor the objects as such and their succession reveal a logic of action. This can not be a removal. The implied narrative structure remains nonsensical and absurd: parallels to the complex of the Sysyphos mythology come into play.

Sebastian Hempel shows an installation: countless yellow plastic strips hang down to eye-level and create a dense field. They are all fixed to an overhead conveyor belt that, interrupted by breaks, moves fast as an endless loop and in narrow serpentines. Thus the sagging strips are transformed into an evenly chaotic structure, animated in itself and floating under the ceiling.

Ruben Kindermans shows a short film: there is a young man trying out different more or less pointless tricks with balls (and rehearsing on an electric guitar from time to time) in the courtyard of a decayed factory. The film shows how he again and again fails in these attempts and then finally succeeds in bringing about something quite improbable: the ball he throws for instance gets stuck precisely between two bars above him. Was this chance or luck? (Or did he just continue filming until it finally worked out and then cut all the other unsuccessful attempts?) With its actor and ambiguous humour the film reminds of the young Buster Keaton: banal situations that are so unlikely and funny that the viewer has to laugh happily about the successful (but also senseless) actions, about the achievement.

By stretching a thread between floor and ceiling in the cellar room Friederike Mainka creates translucent internal areas. The delicate work itself contrasts sharply with the dark and rough cellar of a former mine, in which the coal dirt hangs on the walls until today. The finished work can never be grasped completely, one can only see parts at a time: the space is so high and extremely narrow that it is impossible to take more distance, and the work (the thread) also continues round a corner.

In her installations Martina Muck works with light: rather a traditional theme of painting. She disassembles ordinary lamps to their component parts (cable, shade, holder, bulb ...) and rearranges them in strange test arrangements. A light source for instance throws a shadow itself because it is illuminated by a brighter one: physically logical but mysteriously paradox in the impression it gives.

invitation card ©:
images ©: the artists
Organisation: Willi Otremba| Dr. Peter Schmieder | Elly Valk-Verheijen

supported by: Sparkasse Dortmund, bureau of cultural affairs of the city of Dortmund