This weekend is the Spinnerei Spring Gallery Tour (Rundgang), featuring 20 exhibition venues along with a selection of open studios and alternative spaces on site. The event only lasts through Sunday, but many exhibitions are on view for a longer duration of time.
Here are a few impressions from the preview events on Friday evening.
Laden für Nichts
Sag’s nochmal
April 4 – June 9, 2018
Immediately confronted with a massive, room scale structure of fabric stretched around a wooden frame, one feels as if they are standing at the backside of a traditional painting.
The delicate cream colored fibers are thin enough that forms from the other side are visible. An opening at the opposite end of the gallery reveals the rest of what is described as installation / painting by Stefan Vogel & Lawrence Power. The objects, images and textures to be found within are best experienced up close, possible only by treading upon the artist-made terrain itself.
ASPN
Finissage
April 14 – May 26, 2018
In perhaps direct contrast to the installative notions of the previous gallery, ASPN welcome viewers into their new location at the Spinnerei with an exhibit questioning the functionality and commodification of art. “Finissage” was developed as a collaborative project by Famed (Leipzig) and Michael Riedel (Frankfurt / Main) specifically for the inauguration of the new space.
According to the condensed press release version, “At the opening, the gallery system collapses completely: the room remains as bare shell and is thus actually appropriable for use as an exhibition space. The Finissage forms the programmatic outset of the new gallery space, beginning and end are inverted. What is there to see? The renovation and modifications of the gallery progresses during the exhibition, on 26 May 2018 the conversion will be completed. Art as a functional system and as a commodity will be debated in this six-week project. The walls remain empty, and yet it is possible to buy something: money.”
HALLE 14
Requiem for a Failed State
April 14 – August 5, 2018
“Requiem for a Failed State” takes a look at the end of the GDR from the perspective of those born after 1980. What struck me from the exhibition text was to consider that “the results of the political changes and the decade of disorientation in the 1990s” come out of a time period in which the artists from this exhibition “have few or no individual memories.”
Speaking with artistic director Michael Arzt, it became clear that the selection of the relatively young artists inherently lends itself to viewing the perceptible, as well as the more enigmatic, remnants, remains or residue of which they have limited personal histories. This makes the effects of this time, as experienced from the respective distances of these artists in the present, all the more potently critical and diverse.
Galerie EIGEN + ART
Once Over Easy
April 14 – June 16, 2018
Featuring the work of Kai Schiemenz, which combines figurative fragments into “sculptures that pose riddles” through attaching representational remnants with makeshift and artificial materials to interestingly abstract compositional ends.
LIA
ALL YOU CAN’T EAT
April 14-15, 2018
Located a few floors up in Hall 18 is the Leipzig International Art Program (LIA), serving as an artist residency space for creatives from around the world.
On view this season is an exhibition of artists hailing from Australia, Denmark, USA, Cyprus, and Chile. In addition to the works displayed this weekend, on Saturday artist Margo Greb will be performing at approximately every hour from 11am until 5pm.
UNTERGESCHOSS 14
Right Here, Right Now
April 14 – May 06, 2018
It offers a range of conceptual, material and spatial approaches that provide a glimpse into the breadth of work from select recent graduates of the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle.
Werkschau
Invited
April 13–15, 2018
On view in the temporary exhibition space known as the Werkschauhalle are works from galleries hailing from Taipei, Vienna, Budapest, Paris, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Köln/Seoul and Cluj/Berlin.
Spinnerei Spring Gallery Tour
Sat. April 14, 2018 / 11 – 18h
Sun. April 15, 2018 / 11 – 16h
Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei
Spinnereistraße 7, 04179 Leipzig
Cover shot: “Requiem for a Failed State,” HALLE 14, Spinnerei. Photo © Elizabeth Gerdeman
