Art Calendar – Current Exhibitions in Germany

The nerd: by definition a loner with a high IQ and outstanding abilities in one particular field. Once perceived rather negatively by his surroundings, today the notable abilities of the nerd still fit the description, but otherwise his image has changed considerably: it is now somewhere between hipster with horn-rimmed glasses and influential specialist. The organizers of the New Society for Visual Arts (Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst / NGBK) have made this new positioning the theme of the exhibition Die Irregulären. Ökonomien des Abweichens (The Irregulars. Economies of Deviation). They combine the nerd with the art of being different. At the same time, they question the extent to which this artistic combination can at all stand out in a society in which creativity and being different is becoming more and more the norm.

The exhibition gathers together artists who live out their “own expert knowledge” and “virtuoso, dilettante and nerdy way of working and strategies of deviation”. The Berlin artist Nasan Tur, for example, has a man turn somersaults in various public spaces and captures the reactions of bystanders with a video camera. Klara Hobza, who has made it her artistic project to dive through Europe, sometimes eats a banana under water during diving lessons, and Fabian Hesse explores in his works both public space and cyberspace, using, among other things, models that he makes sculptural with a 3-D printer and plastic chord.

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