State of emergency
Georg Winter (*1962) has been one of the leading activists in the area of spatially oriented experimental art since the 1980s. The Ernst Barlach Haus is now the stage for this maverick sculptor, media and performance artist who explores the overlap between art and life with often biting wit. Winter’s special field is the staging of exceptional situations, and his scenario for the Ernst Barlach Haus is also one of explosive power: a satellite has crashed into the museum’s inner courtyard ...
An essential aspect of Georg Winter’s artistic strategy is the close interconnection between art and life, and here Winter undermines all expectations of clear boundaries: his art abandons the secure framework of the institution of the museum, or conversely challenges the museum with an unexpected incursion of the outside world.
And just such a collision has occurred with the Ernst Barlach Haus: a Fall-away Object has crashed through the glass roof into the atrium – Barlach's sculptures get a visit from outer space. Winter strikes at the heart of the ideas of protection and value inherent to the museum with this apparently uncontrolled crash landing.
The arranged satellite crash not only strikes at the heart of the museum, but is also an artistic gesture with which Georg Winter takes up the radicalism of Ernst Barlach: Winter sees his intervention as the continuation of the humanistic commitment that Barlach realised through traditional sculpture. Despite their different artistic languages, Winter sees a shared aspiration: art as a power directed uncompromisingly onto the existential questions of human life.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.