In a dialogue tour, Ludwig Seyfarth speaks with Friedrich Mennekes S.J., sociologist of religion and curator, about spiritual aspects of illusionism in (contemporary) art based on selected works within the exhibition.

Afterwards, the in France living artist Anaïs Lelièvre will provide information (in English) about the complex process of creation and the dimensions of the content of her installation in the exhibition.

Friederike Feldmann, Berlin, artist of the exhibition, and Raimund Stecker, Düsseldorf, professor of art studies at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Essen in conversation with Ludwig Seyfarth, curator of the exhibition.

In 1995 Raimund Stecker curated the exhibition Das Abenteuer der Malerei (The Adventure of Painting) at the Kunstverein Düsseldorf. 20 years ago his book Malerei: Das unentfremdete Medium (Painting: The Unalienated Medium) was published. Is painting still a more authentic and more immediate means of expression than other, more technical media? Friederike Feldmann's painting seems to argue against this. What seems to have been cemerged spontaneously and immediately is based on projections and manifold processes of transfer. Yet her work always revolves around the painterly gesture, which has not lost its power of fascination to this day.

Panel discussion with Magdalena Kröner, Wolfgang Ullrich & Mario von Kelterborn

Digital image cultures are changing art, and not only in a virtual way. If today "furniture, make-up, protest rallies or handbags can be varieties of art", as Wolfgang Ullrich observes, this would hardly be imaginable without a globalised world shaped by digital communication. Is the value of art evolving towards a "communication value", which Mario von Kelterborn collects because art lets him understand the world better? And what does the new image of the human being at the interface of art, digital technology and artificial intelligence look like, which Magdalena Kröner is on the trail of just like some of the artists in the exhibition Phantoms and Other Illusions?