The successful cooperation between the Museum of Prints and Drawings and the Ernst Schering Foundation will celebrate its 15th anniversary in 2023. On this festive occasion, the resulting collection of contemporary drawing art will be honored with a special exhibition.
The collection now comprises more than 130 works from the 1970s to the present by 30 top national and international artists, including N. Dash, Nadine Fecht, Dan Graham, Julie Mehretu, Matt Mullican, Carsten Nicolai, Tomás Saraceno and Jorinde Voigt.
The exhibition explores the question of how artists translate their perception of the world into an image and by which contexts and discourses these images are shaped.
Which frame, which ideas do artists put around the section of the world they observe?
Visitors to the group exhibition will be welcomed by the edition "Subjects" (2018) by US artist Matt Mullican. In it, Mullican spreads out his system of signs for describing the world and the universe, developed since the 1970s, in ten lithographs expanded by pencil drawings. The title of the third sheet is "World Framed" and reflects man's view of the world, a view that is always influenced by pre-existing knowledge and ideas.
The question of how people perceive their environment and how they form an image of the world accompanies visitors throughout the exhibition. In their drawings, the artists united here do not seek an object-related or naturalistic image of reality, but create abstract pictorial inventions: Systems of signs and colors, notations and scores, gestural and grid-like, bundles of lines and networks, as well as cracks and folds.
The means of drawing used include media common to the 20th and 21st centuries, such as ballpoint pen, fineliner, pencil and colored pencil. In addition, unusual means and materials are also used: Spider webs, hair, the salt and water of the sea, prehistoric stone tools, and chemicals. In addition, drawing and printmaking are combined. There is also drawing and palpation directly with the fingers, or the entire body is used in drawing. Sometimes the act of drawing turns into a dance. The works are the result of the interplay of planned and random, rationally and emotionally guided processes and show in particular the potential of experimentation and research in drawing.
Artists of the Ernst Schering Foundation Collection:
Aljoscha, William Anastasi, Dieter Appelt, Fritz Balthaus, Irma Blank, Tom Chamberlain, N. Dash, Néstor Sanmiguel Diest, William Engelen, Nadine Fecht, Dan Graham, Morgan O'Hara, Claude Heath, Carsten Höller, Channa Horwitz, David Horvitz, Linda Karshan, Bernhard Leitner, Matt Mullican, Julie Mehretu, Kazuki Nakahara, Carsten Nicolai, Sophie Tottie, Tomás Saraceno, Fiene Scharp, Nora Schattauer, Ignacio Uriarte, Jorinde Voigt, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Ralf Ziervogel.
"World Framed. Contemporary Drawing Art from the Ernst Schering Foundation Collection at the Museum of Prints and Drawings" is curated by Jenny Graser, curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Prints and Drawings.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a program designed to actively strengthen the discourse on contemporary drawing art.