INVENTORY Part I / Part II.

14 September to 11 November 2023 ⟶ Galerie

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part I. Photo: Finja Sander

Gerhard Hoehme, Menacing shadows, 1963-1965, Oil on canvas, 160 x 140 cm. Photo: Katrin Rother

Galli, Sommerbild (22.7.89), 1989, Mixed Media/nettle, 100 x 80 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part I. Foto: Finja Sander

Max Neumann, Untitled (Triptych), 1985, Tempera/distemper on canvas, 197 x 81 cm each

Arnulf Rainer, Panel, 1961, Etching, 54 x 37,7 cm, Ed. 98

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part I. Photo: Finja Sander

Richard Serra, Min, 1990, Lithography, 133 x 205 cm, Ed. 22 + 4, CR 54

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part I. Photo: Finja Sander

Georges Noël, Remembering Bethany Beach, 1985, Mixed media on wood, 190 x 81,5 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part I. Photo: Finja Sander

Georges Noël, Le grand étendard azur, 1994, Mixed media on canvas, 220 x 207 cm

Eduardo Chillida, Untitled (from the series Aromas), 2000, Woodcut, 53,5 x 42,5 cm, Ed. 120, CR 00012

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part I. Photo: Finja Sander

Walter Menne, p7mg, 1962, Ink on paper, 42 x 29,5 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part I. Photo: Finja Sander

Fred Thieler, Dunkel wachsend (dark growing), 1978/79, Mixed media on canvas, 230 x 145 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part II. Photo: Finja Sander

archiv SANDER I SCHAAL, Untitled (Untitled, Triptych), 2023, Digital print on transparent paper, stainless steel screws, metal eyelet, PVC tarpaulin, 75,5 x 64,5 cm. Photo: Finja Sander

archiv SANDER I SCHAAL, Untitled (Le grand étendard azur), 2023, Digital print on transparent paper, stainless steel screws, metal eyelet, PVC tarpaulin, 71,5 x 73 cm. Photo: Finja Sander

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part II. Photo: Finja Sander

archiv SANDER I SCHAAL, Untitled (Min), 2023, Digital print on transparent paper, stainless steel screws, metal eyelet, PVC tarpaulin, 75,5 x 63 cm. Photo: Finja Sander

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part II. Photo: Finja Sander

archiv SANDER I SCHAAL, Untitled (Untitled, 2.12.-4.12.86), 2023, Digital print on transparent paper, stainless steel screws, metal eyelet, PVC tarpaulin, 84,5 x 70,5 cm. Photo: Finja Sander

archiv SANDER I SCHAAL, Untitled (Untitled, from the series Aromas), 2023, Digital print on transparent paper, stainless steel screws, metal eyelet, PVC tarpaulin, 74,5 x 65 cm. Photo: Finja Sander

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. INVENTORY - Part II. Photo: Finja Sander

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Finja Sander

Galerie Georg Nothelfer is pleased to present a group exhibition with the young artist duo

archiv SANDER I SCHAAL in dialogue with historical positions from the gallery's collection.

At the interface between quotation and further development, Finja Sander and Daniel Schaal create an open-ended review with INVENTORY that focuses on the art production of European and North American post-war modernism. In times of ever-increasing political crises, it is a central concern of both artists to approach works and ideas of the equally crisis-ridden postwar era and to make them fruitful for contemporary modes of art production. To this end, Schaal and Sander examined the collection of Galerie Georg Nothelfer and looked for works that convey different ways of dealing artistically with the concept of the state of emergency. Bringing those works into the gallery space, subjecting them to a catchy appraisal, re-contextualising them and ultimately reactivating them, is thus the central moment of the second collaboration between archiv SANDER | SCHAAL and

Galerie Georg Nothelfer.

INVENTORY lives from its distances, gaps and voids. Thus, the works of the artists, all of whom were born before 1950, and the processual, intuitive working method of archiv SANDER | SCHAAL are juxtaposed from a temporal and formal perspective. Their practice is furthermore characterised by contrasts: Daniel Schaal (*1990, all pron.), for example, approaches the paradoxes and mass aesthetics of our contemporary consumer society with the help of traditional printing processes. Finja Sander (*1996), on the other hand, deals with mechanisms of remembrance and commemoration in constellations of performance and sculpture that develop over long periods of time. While Sander looks at the past from the perspective of the present, receives it and continues to think about it, Schaal uses multimedia techniques to explore current phenomena of our time, researching narratives and the potential of everyday objects that surround the artist and locate his existence.

In individual undertakings, such as for the current exhibition INVENTORY, Sander and Schaal take their different ways of working and thinking as an opportunity to create joint works that connect the individual approaches in perspective and allow them to grow.

From performative gatherings that are further developed into installation-based structures, they repeatedly test anew the possibility of collaboration between seemingly incompatible forms of work.

The reduction to formal language, the use of one's own body as a starting point and the play with previously untried materials are strategies that are also characteristic of post-war artistic production.

If we look at the works of Galli, Georges Noël, Arnulf Rainer or Fred Thieler, the relevance of physical effort becomes apparent even in its absence. Expression does not stem from the mind here, but from the totality of the body in intuition and affect. For the exhibition, Sander and Schaal chose positions that show the formal diversity arising from this approach and open up a wide field of tension between figurative and abstract ways of representation.

Part I

The gallery floor, provisionally covered with deep blue PVC film, stands out clearly from the existing works installed in the room. It refers to the work project of Sander and Schaal: a happening, which is to be understood as a recourse to the 1960s, is used by the two artists to confront the works installed on the walls with working materials stacked on metal shelves. In this way, the gallery becomes an open working space that fills the empty spaces of the exhibition with new forms and content. From here, Sander and Schaal devote themselves to the unique works in an individual way over the duration of the exhibition and develop both their own work, a new space and new meanings for the eleven selected works, whereby these can once again become fixed points of contemporary art, even beyond their art-historical relevance. (Text: Nikolas Geier)

Part II

After an intensive working process lasting several weeks in the gallery space and in public, the newly created works by Sander and Schaal are integrated into the fluid exhibition concept. While the provisionally laid blue PVC tarpaulin initially served as pragmatic protection for the gallery floor, Sander and Schaal now use it as part of their series of works "Staring, into Everything". This series focuses above all on the subject of looking at something, of immersing oneself in something.

Sander and Schaal stage themselves as anonymous recipients. At the same time, they seem to almost dissolve in the previously made digital reproductions of the historical works and give up their independence.

"Staring into Everything", the result of Sander and Schaal's artistic stocktaking in the rooms of Galerie Nothelfer, is an echo, a commentary, an extension, but also a preservation and a standstill.

The works created by the two artists during the process will be juxtaposed with works from the Nothelfer Collection. The second opening on 13 October marks the transition between the working phase and the final presentation.

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