With my prints I want to communicate a sense of lightness and freedom and to make the observer float in undefined spaces that are both sea and sky. The freedom of not being connected with the ground and defeating gravity is often all I need to escape from a repetitive reality. It lets me take life with a more spontaneous and serene attitude.

During the past seven years I have spent most springs working in the bucolic setting of Bentlage, where I have taken an annual pleasure in observing new growth emerge—„saftiges Grün”—in the trees and fields. This spring, of course, I was confined to my apartment in New York City. I learned to adapt to the necessary restrictions of working at a small desk at home with minimal materials instead of in my studio. I started making intimate drawings that reflect my ongoing craving for space and emulate rippling fields of grass or wheat. I also began an evening ritual of walking laps around the communal garden behind my building at dusk. For the first time, I witnessed the emergence of spring in New York on a daily, focused basis. An acquaintance told me about the following passage in Joan Didion’s memoir Blue Nights (2011). If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, I might not have experienced this phenomenon for myself:
„In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue. This period of the blue nights does not occur in subtropical California … but it does occur in New York…. You notice it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming—in fact not at all a warming—yet suddenly summer seems near, a possibility, even a promise. You pass a window, you walk to Central Park, you find yourself swimming in the color blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres, or that of the Cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors. The French called this time of day ‘l’heure bleue.’ To the English it was ‘the gloaming.’ The very word ‘gloaming’ reverberates, echoes— the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour—carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows.”

Revising History: All my previous life was passing from my dreams during the quarantine. In my awake time, I was revising all the people, the places and the emotions that made me who I am today, as if time freezed for the past two months. The current situation is a shock for most people that they, as I, mourn for our past lives since we feel it will not be the same again after the unprecedented and frightening pause.

Art always took the most important part in my life as I, along my six siblings, grew up in my father‘s giant workshop at the countryside. What inspires me is the beauty of simple things and a sense of freedom. Sometimes art for me is a playful interaction with the world and sometimes the key to its understanding. I mostly work in fine arts but I‘m open to a variety of techniques and materials as I‘m still in search of the ways to be able to fully express myself.

The Alien invader is often depicted as ‚the little green man‘. Covid 19 has turned us all into potential little green men, alienating us from each other. The little green men holding hands and dancing in a circle as a representation of an old english nursery rhyme „Ring-a-ring-o΄-rosies“. As children we would have joined hands and danced in a ring, while singing the rhyme louder and faster, until we all–fell down.
„Ring-a-ring-o΄-rosies
A pocket full of posies
A-tishoo, A-tishoo
We all fall down“
It is supposed that this rhyme originated from the time of the plague (black death), which sweapt across europe during the middle-ages. Ring-a-rosies–referred to a red circular rash which was a common symptome. The posies represent the different flowers and herbs people carried to ward off the disease.
A-tissue and falling down = sneezing and falling down dead.

The dog needs a walk. A time of restriction and distance. Also a time of closeness. Closeness to my dearest. Closeness to a threat. The layers under my skin in search of common ground. Restricted in habits, released in emptyness. Creativity grows. Creativity struggles. The dog needs a walk.

Due to the current corona crisis, minimum distance is what we should practice in our social life at the moment. Minimum distance is also what we need to get an overview and not getting lost in the details. In a way one could also say that we should try to reduce distance to a minimum, which means empathy, what we should take to the heart in our daily life anyway. To be as close as possible. To have an eye for the tiny details, which could stand for the whole or even make the real important points visible.

Gedicht zum Welttag der Poesie ΄20
stille
steht

nicht
mehr
das
was
vorher
war
tun
nun
ruhn
über
denken

weite
nähe
schenken
wanken
ungewisse
gedanken
gewiss

sorge
für
zwischen
raum
um
für
zu
sorgen

stille
steht

welt
dreht
sich
um

Muzak & Riha work using the principle of collage on multimedia sets and scenarios that have evolved from community-based and participatory projects with colleagues and lay people. They try to look at things closely, explore them from different angles and and push the boundaries of general conceptions in order to visually navigate through narrative processes of image, sound and time–to find the image behind the images.

We keep arts moving! Or rather: arts keep us moving. Since its beginning in the early nineties, this place has established itself in Münsterland as a stage for contemporary art. We present works of important artists from Germany and abroad in attractive historic rooms; ambitioned regional and international projects get started from here or are supported by the planning teams of our cultural meeting place.

„He sources printed material and typographic forms to achieve a sharp, stylized approach to collage. A graduate of the AKI Academy for Art & Design in Enschede, Reith’s crisp compositions balance the mechanical and the natural, the figurative and the abstract that address the unique relationship between architecture and nature.“

„She compares the form of art to poetry or prose wherewith she intends to awaken the emotions of the spectators for the humane as well as today’s society‘s stimuli. Her works refer to a state of mind for the time being. She has been working with women and femininity for the last decades. The primary work emphasized on youth and innocence but now the women have matured like herself. They have more volume as often happens to women while ageing: ‚They are an example of their own experience and their story is a totally different one from the one they told before‘, says the artist about her work. She has been in the frontgroup of graphic artists for quite a long time with her unique and personal style as well as with her work on behalf of Icelandic graphic art itself.“

Lookout: Window of Uncertainty was made from a temporary studio desk at home in May 2020. Like most artists I couldn’t access my studio because of Covid-19 restrictions, but instead had to work in other ways and find other solutions. At times semi abstract ‘head’-like forms appear in my work. They have presence, or act as a carrier of information. In this case a certain pause or waiting is implied, looking out from a window awaiting further instruction, or ‘staying alert’ which became a UK government message during the pandemic.

My art works are about network. Networks are usually associated with something positive but here it represents something uncontrolled. For this I used Corona and the official numbers from Robert-Koch-Institut. The image of a butterfly as a carrier for COVID embodies both something fragile as well as change. We will all have to wait and see if the world after COVID will bring as much change as the First World War did. One example for the change that the war brought Is the female fashion.
After the First World War the image of women changed very drastically which resulted in a change of fashion. I leave it up to the viewers’s interpretation to decide if the world after and with Covid will be shattered like a butterfly or maybe transforms to something new, like a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly.

When I was a child my parents moved a lot with my siblings and me. Among varying people, changing landscapes, languages and cultures, the imagery of my environment became the constant feature in my life. Comics, books or works of art that surrounded me revealed a world that wasn’t tied to a particular place.
As long as I can think back images were an essential part of my inner home that accompanied my journey. Early on I realized that places and images not only can be consumed but also can be an endless source for inventing and creating one’s own images. This simple discovery laid the foundation for my existence as an artist.

Pairing
He is painter, drawer, filmmaker, media artist.
Have a look at:
vimeo.com/439333411/3c07b9cd96

Statement: Muzak & Riha
cf. Karoline Riha

Stemma, 2020: Fragments of clay objects found, 100% manufactured cotton paper and wooden table, variable dimensions. The word stemma (from the Greek: στέμμα) means ‚connection, a connecting line‘; in Latin, it is also related to the idea of a ‚pedigree‘.
In philology, stemma codicum is used to designate the ‚family‘ or depen-
dency relationship between copies/codices with the same text; by comparing them, it is possible to construct the critical edition of the ancient text, as similar as possible to what the original would have been.
In this context of quarantine, we have an opportunity to rethink our role
models every day, bringing our attention to core values.
The Stemma project came up with the interrelation of fragments of objects–serial copies produced, broken and ‚disconnected‘ as a proposal of closeness. These connections are conversations or gatherings of potential families (of objects), fostered by ‚touch‘ and by situations in which the distance is minimal. The original text can, here and now, be found in the memories of the evoked gestures, which, recovered, allow us to continue living...

In the last eight years she has been devoted mainly to analog animation, character creation, set building, and props design. Besides, she has worked in several short films in the direction, art and sound department. „Memory is has been always a topic for me, because I forget things all the time. In this short animation, I tried to reflect the struggle my brain lives in every time I try to remember something I forgot. It is like catching good ideas, or catching a mosquito; at some point you have it, and suddenly you don’t. At the end it appears to be true that elephants have a good memory, probably better than mine.“

My work revolves around questions about the environment, science, technology, and ultimately ourselves, integrated into the tools we create. Technology is no longer seen as something far removed from human nature or in contrast to the natural environment, but as an emerging result of our thinking and action.
Human action is constantly producing objects, but the ontology of the artificial differs greatly between disciplines such as experimental science, art, and design. Recognizing that these complex relationships are our narrative constructions, they are examined from different perspectives and using a wider range of media. The action is based on research, creating scenarios that aim to create design proposals and shift common perceptions. They look for the contradictory and the paradoxical and tell stories that direct our imagination to future fulfillment contracts uncertain at the moment.
I want to make the viewer aware of the social mechanisms of the human species and to understand the rules that govern our behavior. Through the creation of possible future scenarios and the study of the projection of human needs, conjectures, narratives, dreams, or hopes, I not only attempt to predict but aim to form a more substantial reality.

Born in Anderlecht. Head of the Printmaking Department of The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels he lives and works in Brussels. His prints questions the relationship to culture in the making, production and distribution of images.

As a writer, I often try to look at the same story from different perspectives. Can you miss something you didn‘t want anymore (probably), can you love someone you don‘t like (unfortunately), is there Life After Death (yes; it dropped in 1997 and went diamond)? The two Memory pieces I contributed fit together, and at the same time, they don‘t, do they?

Solitude I love being within my four walls ... voluntarily. I often modify rooms because they change my view of things, and I‘m fascinated by uncommon rooms, special cuts, the light in the room, the furnishings; all that influences my work as an artist. But what, if you have to be in these beloved rooms?
We were restricted to our places by Corona crisis. Stay at home! Keep Distance! Suddenly, external requirements determined everyday life in terms of people and space. The otherwise beloved retreat suddenly became too tight for you, and being/living alone now may mean loneliness and isolation.
But: I still like to be within my four walls!

Minimum distance–looking out–looking in Keeping a distance–keeping an invisible threat away–an invisible virus ready to invade even our own shadow. At the same time the unforeseen times give us a chance to look within–to stop and to reflect–to truly consider what is of most value–what is most important to keep close and to embrace.
Looking out–looking in.

In our collaboration we appreciate differences and opposites that push and displace the theme in different directions. Our motivation is to delve into structures representing the coexistence of present and past, and to make narratives that circulate and propagate.