Kunstverein Hannover Award Exhibition
Ole Blank, Lena Marie Emrich,
Pablo Schlumberger, Tuğba Şimşek,
Catharina Szonn
Kunstverein Hannover
August 24 — October 6, 2024
Kunstverein Hannover has been running a residency program for young artists for over 40 years. At the end of the program, their newly created works are shown in an exhibition at Kunstverein Hannover - this time not by three artists as usual, but by five.
The one- and two-year scholarships, which have been awarded since 1983, support artistic development both through project funding and by providing living and working space. The Kunstverein Hannover Award, with its regional and national focus, is supported by the Kunstverein Hannover, whose premises are made available to the scholarship holders for a final exhibition.
Information on the artists and the works on display
PABLO SCHLUMBERGER
In his artistic practice, Pablo Schlumberger (born 1990 in Aachen, lives and works in Düsseldorf) draws on various (art) historical epochs as well as high and pop culture. His works in the fields of sculpture, drawing, painting, installation and media art deal with the question of representation and perception in a humorous way. After completing his studies at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts in 2018 under Andreas Slominski, his works have been shown in Cologne, Münster, Hamburg and Varese (Italy), among others. In 2023 he received the Neustart Plus scholarship from the Stiftung Kunstfonds. In 2020 he was a fellow of the Residence NRW+ program in Münster and received the Kunstverein Hannover Award.
Die Enthüllung (Messerwerfer), 2024
Oil and pastel on canvas, 200 × 180 cm, detail
Courtesy of the artist
Die Enthüllung (Messerwerfer), 2024
Oil and pastel on canvas, 200 × 180 cm, detail
Courtesy of the artist
Die Enthüllung (Messerwerfer), 2024
Oil and pastel on canvas, 220 × 180 cm, detail
Courtesy of the artist
Sketch, 2024
Courtesy of the artist
As if he had just escaped from the circus ring, the Messerwerfer (knife-thrower) performs on stages in several exhibition spaces at the Kunstverein. Confrontational and playful at the same time, the figure establishes a connection to the outside world. The stages appear staged and artificial, the double staging in the exhibition space takes on an initially absurd appearance. In a combination of painting and installation, an absurd profession seems to be addressed, that of an entertainer, a showman - humorously displayed here in all its irony.
TUGBA SIMSEK
Tuğba Şimşek (born 1986 in Grünstadt, lives and works in Hanover) draws on lived experiences, feelings, fragments of memory, places and everyday observations in their contradictory nature. She studied at the Braunschweig University of Art, where she graduated in 2019 as a master student of Olav Christopher Jenssen. She also studied at the Freie Kunstakademie Mannheim, the Metropolitan University of Art and Design Cardiff and the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles. Tuğba Şimşek's work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, and in 2022 she received the Kunstverein Hannover Award. She has been awarded various scholarships, including Atelier auf Zeit, Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim (2021).
o. T., 2024
MDF, blackboard paint, chalk, 34 × 26 × 1 cm
Mosaics (from the series Himalaya), 2023–2024
Wood and small, hand-cut mosaic stones, 33.5 × 26 × 1 cm
Tuğba Şimşek records what she perceives in her surroundings casually, sometimes with her eyes closed, but always intuitively. Drawing has become a habit for her, a diary - a natural sequence of movements. In her new installation at the Kunstverein, the black circles on the walls look like targets - and the powdery colors provided look like an invitation: visitors are invited to participate in a large chalk painting and to see the black targets as deep wells of happiness into which something is thrown. The collective process leads to a joint product that is left to change and chance. Elsewhere, Tetris bricks - based on childhood memories - seem to glide across a huge, jet-black blackboard wall: the paused representation of a video game that stands for the childhood and youth of an entire generation. At the same time, childhood is the stage of life in which lack of intention, whether in play or in boredom, drives one's own creative work. The combination of biographical elements, subconscious images and involuntary action are brought together in Tuğba Şimşek's working method.
CATHARINA SZONN
Catharina Szonn (born 1987, Großenhain) studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach, the Iceland Academy of Arts Reykjavik and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In her expansive installations, she poetically questions and updates the relationship between man and machine, progress and transience. Her artistic practice touches on philosophical themes and integrates text and language. Catharina Szonn has taken part in exhibition projects such as the European Media Art Festival Osnabrück (2019) and has shown her work in solo exhibitions in Amberg, Constance and Frankfurt am Main, among others. In 2022 she received the Kunstverein Hannover Award, and in 2023 the research grant for visual arts from the Berlin Senate Administration.
Note on the subject of the society of decline (Oliver Nachtwey)
Courtesy of the artist
Eternal Exercise, 2024
Film still
Courtesy of the artist
Eternal Exercise, 2024
Film still
Courtesy of the artist
Eternal Exercise, 2024
Film still
Courtesy of the artist
Catharina Szonn's work at the Kunstverein, which borrows from elements of skittles, presents a more or less dysfunctional machine: it raises and lowers itself, sometimes with great effort, and seems to train itself with each attempt; the cumbersome movement illustrates wear and tear. The machine acts as a performer, making the redundancy of its actions visible in seemingly endless repetitions. The movements are accompanied on LED displays with poetic comments such as this: "Time is running and with it the distance that spreads between a beginning and an end. Please don't go away. Change your mind and stay. More important than the show is that the future is certain. I want you to love me."
LENA MARIE EMRICH
Lena Marie Emrich (born 1991 in Göttingen, lives and works in Brussels, Göttingen and Berlin) deals with the physical and the linguistic, with spatial and human exchange in her artistic practice, which interweaves performance, documentation and sculpture. Lena Marie Emrich's works and collective projects have been exhibited in Paris, Berlin, Bergen, Leipzig, Düsseldorf and Milan, among others. She has been working as a stage designer at the Schaubühne Berlin since 2022. In 2020 she won the Toy Award of the Berlin Masters Foundation, in 2022 she was awarded the Kunstverein Hannover Award. In 2023 she received the Neustart Plus grant from the Stiftung Kunstfonds. Her works are represented in collections such as the Burger Collection, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Arndt Collection and the Marval Collection.
Process documentation photos
Courtesy of the artist
Process documentation photos
Courtesy of the artist
Process documentation photos
Courtesy of the artist
Lena Marie Enrich
Process documentation photos
Courtesy of the artist
The curved shape of Lena Marie Emrich's Gossip Chairs, an installative ensemble on Sophienstraße that invites people to take a seat, means that although the people sitting on them are facing in different directions, they are nevertheless facing each other and are aware of each other. The result is a staged or forced closeness that becomes a game between intimacy and conversation on the one hand and confrontation with strangers, observing and being observed on the other. Whether tête-à-tête or ménage-à-trois - each of the sculptures tells a different story and encourages viewers to engage in shared conversations. Moral questions are addressed based on the shape of the serpentine. 16 texts selected by the artist and accessible via a digital archive are available via QR codes.
Lena Marie Emrich's practice is a symbiosis of sculptural and fragmentary poetry. The wall works "I Heard Only Good Things" and "Rumors Do Not Fall From The Heavens" allude to the ambivalence that gossip brings with it. Although it has negative connotations, gossip accompanies us in our everyday lives: at work or on our nightly rambles, on social media and in other media. The cliché that labels gossip as typically female has misogynistic connotations - and at the same time, it was long the only form in which women could express themselves uncensored on critical topics.
OLE BLANK
In his multimedia practice, Ole Blank (born 1990 in Lübeck) uses social, cultural and natural commonplaces as conceptual starting points, which he translates into poetic and allegorical images in space. Since graduating from the Braunschweig University of Art in 2017, his work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions in Romania, the Netherlands and Germany. Locally, he has been involved in projects such as the Absent Academy and the Niki Residency Program in Hanover. In 2022 he received the Kunstverein Hannover Award. As a fellow of the residency program Fusion:Air 2024 (Romania) and guest artist at the Hertz-Labor (ZKM Karlsruhe), he deepens his practice in the context of transdisciplinary interferences between art, science and technology.
Sketch, 2024
Courtesy of the artist
In a sound archive created especially for the new work at the Kunstverein, the artist collected acoustic recordings of beaches, bays and dunes on the various seas of Europe.
The composition begins with the cries of seagulls in the early morning and ends with a cicada concert in the late evening - with the sound of the sea always present. Voices or other references to possible locations are deliberately omitted. The new sound work Wave Room is an attempt to create a surreal phonogram that compresses the European continent in space and time in such a way that it can be explored or at least imagined in its entirety. The result is a contemplative soundscape that can only be experienced through listening.
Previous award winners
2022 Ole Blank, Tuğba Şimşek, Catharina Szonn
2020 Lena Marie Emrich, Sven-Julien Kanclerski, Pablo Schlumberger
2018 Till Wittwer, Lukas Zerbst, Luise Marchand
2016 Isabel Nuño de Buen, Claudia Piepenbrock, Julian Öffler
2014 Laura Bielau, Susann Dietrich, Christian Retschlag
2012 Arno Auer, Ingo Mittelstaedt, Toulu Hassani
2010 Samuel Henne, Fabian Reimann, Anahita Razmi
2008 Özlem Sulak, Sebastian Neubauer
2006 Claudia Kapp, Jacqueline Doyen
2004 Stefan Jeep, Ho-Yeol Ryu
2002 Thomas Ganzenmüller, Antje Schiffers
1999 Hannes Kater, Bjørn Melhus
1997 Hlynur Hallsson, Petra Kaltenmorgen
1995 Christoph Girardet, Anette Ziss
1993 Bernhard Büttner, Aernout Mik, Michael Stephan
1991 Jörg Lange, Brigitte Raabe, Sabine Wewer
1989 Andrea Ostermeyer, Gabriele Regiert, Brigitte Vickers
1987 Friedhelm Falke, Karl Möllers, Siegfried Pietrusky
1985 Petra Rosenthal, Rolf Sextro, Volker Thies
1983 Rüdiger Barharn, Ralph Kull, Klaus Goulbier
The Kunstverein Hannover Award Call for Entries
The call for entries for the next award is online.
Information on the website of the Kunstverein Hannover:
https://www.kunstverein-hannover.de/en/programme/1418-preis-des-kunstvereinshannover
Applications must be received online by the Kunstverein Hannover by September 22, 2024.
Overview of the three scholarships
Lower Saxony Scholarship (January 2025-December 2026)
The two-year Lower Saxony scholarship is awarded to freelance artists who have completed a university degree and are aged up to 35 (at the time of application) and who live or were born in Lower Saxony or Bremen.
Lower Saxony Scholarship for Young Artists (January-December 2025)
The one-year Lower Saxony Scholarship for Young Artists is awarded to freelance artists up to three years after graduation who live or were born in Lower Saxony or Bremen.
National Scholarship for Young Artists (January-December 2026)
The one-year National Scholarship for Young Artists is awarded to freelance artists up to a maximum of three years after graduation who are resident in Germany.
KUNSTVEREIN HANNOVER
Sophienstrasse 2 — 30159 Hannover
