In Peter Weir’s famous film, The Truman Show (1998), the hero of the film, played by Jim Carrey, has lived in a film studio without his knowledge since birth. He first finds out as an adult that eve- rything around him is an artificial staging and his life is a reality soap that runs daily on TV. In order to escape the glass dome of his current existence, he gets into a boat and sails away over the apparently open sea until he finally hits a wall that is the horizon of his limited world. Steps at the wall lead to an exit that releases him into the outside world.
The exhibition, Notgang am Horizont (Emergency Exit at the Horizon)
is not a themed show in the narrow sense of the word; ‘Theme’ is ultimately the specific atmosphere of the hall, itself: the train shed of the former goods station, characterised as much by its once technical usage as its partial decay. The works will be shown on the artist platform at the rear of the train shed, which, on entering the space, lies in the far distance like a horizon (and emergency exits are here, too). On closer approach, the platform transforms into a large, to a great extent open stage that is both inner and outer worlds, allowing the real to overflow into the imaginary. Large-scale and walk-through objects and installations stand beside painted, drawn, photographed, filmed or digitally created worlds into which one can meditatively delve. Reality and fiction entangle, as do the past, the present and the future.
There are reminiscences of historical illusionary techniques such as the panorama or installations, trompe l‘œil painting, wall and floor drawings, free-standing sculptures and objects as well as numerous large-scale installations that create their own real and fictional spaces, which are like distinct islands within the large industrial landscape of the exhibition space. Alongside the three-dimensional works, the medium of photography in the field of documentary and staging is extensively represented. A video programme with films by different artists, shown in cooperation with www.blinkvideo.de, sends the visitor on further travels through time and space.
Notgang am Horizont (Emergency Exit at the Horizon presents films of:
Conor Gilligan/Tim Reinecke, Claudia Kapp, IRIS-A-MAZ, Aurelia Mihai, Samya Boutros Mikhail, Vanessa Nica Mueller, Stefan Panhans, Ursula Panhans-Bühler, Sabine Wewer