Curated Monthly: Top art picks in Leipzig this January

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The roaring Twenties are back!

As 1920 saw a fresh start after years of war, released through experiments in art and culture, 2020 holds a similar optimistic tension. After a decade of political extremes, protest, and social unrest, one may look at this new decade with wary eyes. However, the new decade brings some form of closure on what was endured in the last and new energy for all that is possible to come.

Who will be this decade’s Frida Khalo or Pablo Picasso and what institution will become as prolific as the Bauhaus?

We have rather a lot to live up to from the 1920s. Curated Monthly continues to narrow down what’s going on in Leipzig’s art scene to help your search.
To encompass the new energy of the New Year this January, our list will be expanding to include one art highlight every month that leads you to Leipzig’s surrounding Saxon centers.


Spinnerei Events

To begin, we return to the Spinnerei where they have their first Rundgang of the year over the weekend of January 11th and 12th between 11:00-20:00 both days. Here’s what will most certainly be on the agenda:

DIANE – Theresa Möller

SheBAM! Halle 14, Untergeschoss
11.01-15.02

Not Ready To Make Nice – Guerrilla Girls

SheBAM! Halle 3-C
11-26.01

SheBam! is the only gallery in Leipzig showing only women artists. Within a city and global network with inherently male-dominated art spheres, the gallery itself becomes a form of protest against this. This Rundgang, SheBAM! will present two exhibitions across two spaces. The mothers of all protest against gender inequality in the art world are the Guerrilla Girls. One exhibition explores the prolific group and we’re excited to see how this fabulous female mixture will be presented. Additionally, the gallery will set up in Halle 14 Untergeschoss to present the exhibition ‘DIANE’ with large-scale paintings of German artist Theresa Möller.

Theresa Möller, Flächen (Surfaces), 2019, oil and acrylics on canvas, 150 x 190 cm – Courtesy: She BAM! Art

The Robbery, 1914

11.01 – 14.03
Reiter Galerie

Dutch artist Lars Bjerre takes over Reiter’s Leipzig space this Rundgang. The artist has created a series of paintings and ceramics about a robbery of crown jewels. Is this robbery based on truth or created purely in the artist’s imagination? Head to the gallery to find out.


Winter Open Studio

11.01 and 12.01
LIA Programme

The international residency programme brings an array of talented artists for stays in Leipzig’s Spinnerei. Their open studio presents work created during these periods and introduces the public to the visiting artists. LIA is a great stop during the Rundgang to get to know the programme and find new talent.

As always, don’t forget to check out all the open studios throughout the whole Spinnerei complex to get to know the local artists.


Elsewhere in Leipzig…

Im Rücken die alte Ordnung (he she they walked)

Open until 15.03
GfZK
Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 9-11

Leipzig’s contemporary art museum GfZK (Gallerie für zeitgenössische Kunst) was in the art world spotlight this year when its director Franciska Zólymon was selected to curate the German pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. She chose the work of socially charged artist Natascha Sadr Haghighian. However, for those that didn’t venture to Venice, Gfzk is bringing a piece of the Biennale to Leipzig. Forms of resistance and solidarity are at the centre of the multimedia exhibition which takes the stage at the GfZK with photographs, drawings, sculptures, videos and a multi-channel sound installation. Parts of the works on display were presented for the Biennale whilst others are on display for the first time.
On Saturday 1st February at 15:00, the artist will be present to give a talk.

Photograph by Erich Glas – Courtesy of the exhibition organisers.

Glasklar

Opening Friday 24 from 18:00
25.01 – 21.02
Galerie Drei Ringe
Antonienstraße 59 (Rolf-Axenstraße)

This unique exhibition is organised by Büro für kulturelle Übersetzungen and curated by Kristina Semenova. The exhibition uses the life and archive of artist Erich Glas as a starting point. The artist was born in Germany in 1897, fought as a commando soldier and aerial photographer and observer in the first World War, and afterwards became one of the first students of Bauhaus. With the rise of the Nazi regime, the artist subsequently fled to Palestine. His journey from the war to Weimar to Kibbutz life is documented through photographs and paintings. A selection of these will be on show at the exhibition alongside works of four artists from Leipzig and Tel-Aviv (Yochai Avrahami, Luise Schröder, Emanuel Mathias and Melina Weissenborn) that have responded directly to the archive.


In This World

Opening 10.01 from 19:00 – 23:00
11.01 – 08.02
Galerie ARTae
Gohliser Straße 3

The gallery presents artists from Germany with a prominent representation of those from Leipzig. This group exhibition brings together three female artists Caroline Kober, Sylvia Perlet-Pfefferkorn, Constanze Zorn working in the field of drawing and painting.


To end January’s list, we are heading beyond Leipzig to Dresden… This exhibition is closing this month and one not to miss given its historic value in the context of the city, the GDR, Saxony and Germany!

A.R. Penck/Wolfgang Opitz: Louisenstrasse, Super-8-Film, 1971. Filmstill Courtesy Wolfgang Opitz/© Archiv Thomas Claus – Courtesy of Städtische Galerie Dresden

A.R.Penck „Ich aber komme aus Dresden (check it out man, check it out).”

Final day January 12th
10:00 – 18:00 daily except Monday
Albertinum Dresden
Tzschirnerplatz 2

A.R. Penck was born as Ralf Winkler in Dresden in 1939. Growing up in the post-war years in East Germany his art practice became philosophically and aesthetically against the regime in which he lived. He was a key player in the ‘underground’ art scene of the East. As a result, he was eventually asked to leave to the West in 1980. This exhibition spans his whole artistic practice presenting his creative responses to the social issues that engulfed the periods pre- and post-reunification in Germany as well as a global perspective.

Clementine is an independent curator interested in historic and contemporary structures that empower cultural exchange. She is a British native that sees herself in a semi-permanent self-exile. She is currently planning to settle by a Saxon lake, but next year the dream may be entirely different.

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