Galerie Kungerkiez

This connection gives rise to a special depth: their works are characterized by a keen attention to the human condition and a sensitive perspective on vulnerability, as well as on the interplay between inner processes and societal developments.

In their first joint exhibition, the artists explore the feeling of unease in our times. What happens when supposed certainties regarding time, relationships, places, and information begin to crumble? The works open up personal perspectives while simultaneously engaging in a mindful dialogue with one another. This creates a resonant space that not only makes uncertainty visible but also opens up spaces for silence, pause, and new orientation. The artists invite viewers to explore this dynamic.

Claudia Benter, *1989, explores in her artistic practice the interstices that arise in the tension between inner and outer positioning—charged, multi-layered spaces that often seem intangible yet carry a quiet urgency within them. A central focus lies on manifestations of transgenerational transmissions, which she explores both in the context of her own family history and in relation to collective experiences and memories. Her choice of motifs and materials evolves from tracing subtle moods and deep resonances, inspired by encounters with objects and people that bear traces of a loss of home or identity.

Stefanie Hengge, born in 1966, develops her work in series. The individual works within a series share a common narrative and coding strategy. In this way, the artist guides the viewer along paths from one work to the next through a landscape in which transformations are legible. Hengge understands her works as traces in time, as condensations in which past and future crystallize in the present. She conceives of the studio as a space for thought and experience—physical, sensory, and situational. Through “play” as an artistic practice, she approaches connections and opens up avenues that point beyond the logical context and the verbally narratable.

Anja Koch-Kenk, *1980, repeatedly engages with the motif of the house, thereby posing the question of what the house can tell us about the states of mind of an individual or a society. Her three-dimensional objects navigate a tension between isolation, inaccessibility, and defensiveness on the one hand, and fragility and permeability on the other. Her fascination with playing with scale was awakened and honed through her work as a set designer and model maker. In her work as an art therapist in residential child and youth care with young children who have been taken into custody, she also encounters the theme of the house as a place of existential significance.