German Art World

All of them are young and have been given excellent training. They are just beginning a lifetime of autonomous work. Since 2001, the Marion Ermer Foundation has annually awarded prizes, each worth 5,000 euros, to four artists from the former East Germany and has made a catalogue and a joint exhibition possible. For the fifth time, the exhibition is being held in the impressive exhibition rooms of the “Octogon” at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts.

This stage is in fact a clever trap. Somewhat roughly-hewn, it might also be an over-sized rostrum. It has steps which invite one to climb up onto the stage, but which simply fold away downwards as soon as one tries to do so. Of course, one could boldly leap up onto it, but as this is a piece of art rather than real life, one will not manage to get up, no matter what one tries. Trap is the unambiguous name that 29-year-old Stefan Eichhorn has given his deceptive work of art, although it could just as easily be a minimalistic and purposeless sculpture.

The fact that Eichhorn, the only one of the four winners of this year’s Marion Ermer Prize to come from Dresden, is showing a work full of allusions and local relevance is not only due to his “home advantage”. His artistic approach is all about using spatial interventions to throw existing relationships into question. His work is octagonal in shape to reflect the central room of the “Octogon” – the name given to the exhibition gallery of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts which, alongside the Bauhaus University of Weimar, is a partner of the Marion Ermer Prize.

The exhibition rooms are fantastic and laden with history. Gutted by fire during a bombing raid of Dresden during the Second World War, they were not useable until after 1990, once they had undergone careful restoration. Standardized “white cubes” could not have been created here. The glass dome – dubbed the “lemon squeezer” on account of its striking shape – is one of Dresden’s landmarks. On the outside, right at the top of the dome, stands a golden angel who is blowing the trumpet of fame.

Documenting blank spaces

The other three prize-winners, who all studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, are also presenting their works here in a concentrated and economical manner, with the support of Berlin curator Ellen Blumenstein.

Born in the town of Greiz in the German state of Thuringia in 1981, Margret Hoppe is a photographer who is showing just a handful of works from two extensive series. She found her Verschwundene Bilder (i.e. Vanished Images) in places where pictures that had been officially commissioned in East Germany had been removed post-1990. Her photographs document blank spaces which are testimony to radical reassessments and changing roles in art. She also researched the wall in the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts on which, as a student, Gerhard Richter had painted his Abendmahl mit Picasso (i.e. Dinner with Picasso) in 1955.

While on a DAAD scholarship in Bulgaria, a popular holiday destination in GDR times, she photographed socialist monuments.

Game of confusion with fridge doors and sunsets

Hans-Christian Lotz from Hamburg uses seemingly delicate, abstract painting to confound his audience, who only realize on closer examination that his artwork is made up of discarded fridge doors. The artist claims not to have changed them in any way – he simply preserves them. He also stresses that his work is not a persiflage of the style of painting which, dubbed the “New Leipzig School”, recently caused a sensation on the art market. The words “Schrott” (i.e. Junk) and “Pop” can be read on posters hanging between the fridge doors. A watercolour Lotz painted himself is exhibited as a reproduction. It is a game of confusion which plays with the expectations and allocations of meaning between artist, work and recipient which cannot and should not always be understood.

Andrea Legiehn also shuns straightforward interpretability and authorship. When she screens video sequences of a five-day stay in Athens on four large yet almost invisible projection surfaces distributed around the room, the audience is catapulted right into the middle of the images, yet on some level remains unsure of what is happening. The camera work switches between keen amateurism and ambitious stylistics. The sea and sunsets can be seen, as can ancient ruins and relics of former advanced civilizations on show in museum display cases. The film also features young people at night who are looking for kicks – not only on their surfboards. The electronic soundtrack composed especially by Mikael D. Brkic removes any sense of place and time from the images.

Broadened horizons

Of course, Stefan Eichhorn’s stage sculpture is also an allusion to problems with the awarding of prizes and to the situation in which graduates of art academies find themselves upon completing their studies.

To win the Marion Ermer Prize, one must apply: applications are invited from artists from the former East Germany who are not older than 35 and have graduated with a degree from an art academy. The international jury, which changes every year, had to examine 189 entries this year. The jury members all chose conceptual artistic stances, with all four prize-winners focusing on the conditions for and possibilities of artistic work. They broadened their horizons by attending master classes or additional courses or by taking part as visiting students in programmes of study in Germany or abroad. As Christian Sery, a jury member and vice chancellor of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts which hosts the competition, writes in the catalogue, the prize can “pave part of the way for the [artists’] further development”.

Are the prize-winners also interested in the founder of the prize? Born in Munich in 1953, Marion Ermer in 1990 inherited real estate assets in the former East Germany worth over 150 million deutschmarks. Following advice she was given, she invested six million in a cultural foundation which bears her name. She was cheated out of the remainder of her fortune by bogus advisers. Today she is destitute, suffers from multiple sclerosis and has become almost blind, and lives off a meagre pension. These days, the foundation concentrates on the prize for young artists.