Klaus Hähner-Springmühl
18 Jan - 10 Feb 2013
KLAUS HÄHNER-SPRINGMÜHL
18 January - 10 February 2013
Klaus Hähner-Springmühl (1950 – 2006), was one of East Germany’s most idiosyncratic artists. From the 1970s onwards, he was a radical performer who experienced and documented his life as an art process, not on the sunny side of the socialist establishment but shoulder to shoulder with the rebels of his generation in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Dresden, Leipzig and East Berlin. He did not avoid battles, trying out possible forms and making things happen – as a boxer, an artist and a musician. His expressive pictorial sketches, photographs, abrasive painted-over photos, objects, montages-demontages, actions and free-jazz interventions were astonishing and wonderfully open to risk. He wanted nothing to do with GDR state art. That is why it will always be a mistake to try and incorporate or draw him into that nationalized web of lies. Those who were close to him saw him as a guiding light, although personally, he was suspicious of any claim to leadership, and he could successfully evade any demands on him, as well as the regulating powers. He immersed himself in chaos, fragmenting his surroundings in his own perception; but he remained calm, as if sending out signals from a well-tempered universe.
A catalogue is appearing for the exhibition (128 pages, German / English, 25 Euros), presenting the artist’s largely unknown works. Texts by: Gunar Barthel, Erich Wolfgang Hartzsch, Barbara Köhler, Claus Löser, Florian Merkel, Olaf Nicolai, Christoph Tannert, Joerg Waehner.
18 January - 10 February 2013
Klaus Hähner-Springmühl (1950 – 2006), was one of East Germany’s most idiosyncratic artists. From the 1970s onwards, he was a radical performer who experienced and documented his life as an art process, not on the sunny side of the socialist establishment but shoulder to shoulder with the rebels of his generation in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Dresden, Leipzig and East Berlin. He did not avoid battles, trying out possible forms and making things happen – as a boxer, an artist and a musician. His expressive pictorial sketches, photographs, abrasive painted-over photos, objects, montages-demontages, actions and free-jazz interventions were astonishing and wonderfully open to risk. He wanted nothing to do with GDR state art. That is why it will always be a mistake to try and incorporate or draw him into that nationalized web of lies. Those who were close to him saw him as a guiding light, although personally, he was suspicious of any claim to leadership, and he could successfully evade any demands on him, as well as the regulating powers. He immersed himself in chaos, fragmenting his surroundings in his own perception; but he remained calm, as if sending out signals from a well-tempered universe.
A catalogue is appearing for the exhibition (128 pages, German / English, 25 Euros), presenting the artist’s largely unknown works. Texts by: Gunar Barthel, Erich Wolfgang Hartzsch, Barbara Köhler, Claus Löser, Florian Merkel, Olaf Nicolai, Christoph Tannert, Joerg Waehner.