Karin Kneffel and René Wirths in conversation with Ludwig Seyfarth

The painter Maurice Denis remarked in 1890 that before a painting depicts a warhorse, a naked body or an anecdote, it is essentially a surface covered in colour. This statement was programmatic for the departure of modern painting from the illusionistic reproduction of reality. However, beyond the avant-garde trench warfare over abstraction and representationalism, Denis' comment also contains generalities. Everything that is to be seen in a painted picture must first be solved as a problem of painting. In conversation, Karin Kneffel and René Wirths provide an insight into their working processes and explain how the results, which can be seen in the exhibition Frozen Mirrors, are achieved.

Michael Wesely in conversation with Barbara Hofmann-Johnson, Director of the Museum of Photography, Braunschweig, moderated by Ludwig Seyfarth

Michael Wesely is known for his long exposure photographs. Changes in urban space - especially in Berlin, where he has lived for a long time - are one of his central motifs. His specially developed cameras remain in one place for up to three years. The construction of new buildings on Potsdamer Platz, for example, is captured as if in fast motion. In his new complex of works, Doubleday (2023), he works with a normal short exposure time, but two images are superimposed on each other. The artist captures places in Berlin from exactly the same perspective as they appear in old black and white photographs. In conversation with Barbara Hofmann-Johnson, Michael Wesely explains his approach and how the artistic and the documentary are combined in his work. 

Welcome: Monika Schnetkamp, Chairwoman Arthena Foundation
Introduction: Ludwig Seyfarth, Curator of the exhibition

Artist talk with Mary-Audrey Ramirez and Gesine Borcherdt

Mary-Audrey Ramirez transforms the world of video games into a cosmos full of fantasy creatures that we encounter in real and digital spaces: Craft and new technologies become one, virtuality and reality merge. But how does gaming actually become art? What is the idea behind a work that looks cheerfully at a world without people? How did the artist develop her visual language and what role does her childhood play, to which everything goes back? Gesine Borcherdt, curator of the exhibition Unsolicited Awakening, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez discuss these and other questions in conversation.