Opening: Friday, 26.5.2023, 7 pm
Welcome: Dr. Carola Brückner, District Councillor
Introduction: Dr. Ralf F. Hartmann, Head of the Cultural Office
The painter and installation artist Bernhard Striebel (* 1953 in Laichingen) works in the expanded coordinates of constructive-concrete art and combines space, image and language in his exhibitions, which are often site-specific. The elongated exhibition halls of the ZAK – Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst (Centre for Contemporary Art) in the Old Barracks on the Citadel inspired him to create an expansive installation of light, colours and words. For the military severity with its structuring pillars and countless double windows demands both subordination and contradiction. Striebel does the latter with minimally invasive interventions, which in turn achieve a maximum of commentary on content as well as aesthetics. He mainly uses foils in primary colours which immerse the rooms in an intense coloured light and evoke a completely altered sense of space. In addition, there are paintings and material collages that play with the obscuration of the primary colours red, green and yellow. Thus atmospherically attuned, painting and text in the form of neon lettering or paper cuts guide the viewer through the spatial corridors and confront him with information that is as irritating as it is enigmatic: “Bernhard Striebel is always concerned with exploring the concrete exhibition space, with ideas and prejudices about art, with playing with seeing, with visibility and becoming visible.” (Dorothée Bauerle-Willert)
