Spektrum Leipzig Reloaded
Five years ago, as part of our “Spektrum Leipzig” exhibition, we presented outstanding graduates of the renowned Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. In the 1970s and 1980s, the university attracted national and international attention as part of the so-called 'Leipzig School'. The informal group of artists centred around Neo Rauch and Arno Rink was renowned for its distinctive visual language and unwavering dedication to painting, particularly at a time when conceptual art dominated the scene. The group of artists, who had come together in Leipzig's Baumwollspinnerei, attracted numerous visitors. Neo Rauch and his student Rayk Goetze still have studios there. Goetze is an artist who is reluctant to be referred to as a representative of the so-called “New Leipzig School”. However, this term is not only repugnant to the associated artists, but is also largely outdated today due to its vagueness. Nevertheless, the well-founded training under Rauch and Rink, among others, has enabled the artists in our exhibition to develop their own styles and visual languages.
Five years on, we are once again turning our attention to Leipzig with 'Spektrum Leipzig Reloaded'. Rayk Goetze, Dorothee Liebscher, Malte Masemann and Miriam Vlaming design their canvases as perceptual devices: fragments of reality intertwine with abstraction and surreal imagery. As graduates of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Leipzig, they each negotiate their own private, historical and social reference systems. Working with fragments, as seen in the work of Goetze, Masemann and Vlaming, opens up a discourse on temporality while simultaneously pointing to loss and new development. Their works open up a discourse on memory, identity, and social and personal change.
Dorothee Liebscher's works merge nature and architecture to create surreal spaces. These pictorial worlds offer perspectives that one is only too happy to lose oneself in — intermediate spaces where reality and imagination blend together. Miriam Vlaming's paintings are characterised by the glazed egg tempera technique, which gives her pictures a dreamlike, almost ethereal quality. Her works move between memory and imagination, defying clear attribution. Rayk Goetze's paintings combine the precision of an old master in applying paint with a strong, flat use of colour. Their gloomy, luminous colours create a special grace and tension, transferring the pictures into the present day. Malte Masemann has developed his own unique visual language, combining retrospective imagery with contemporary colouration. The meaning of the content of his mostly large-format works remains enigmatic, leaving room for interpretation.
