Wandering Exhibition
Conceived / curated by Marcus Sendlinger
Co-curated by the host country institution

SINCE 2010
13 YEARS OF NIGHTMARE
 
ALPTRAUM- HAMBURG the 18th show will open March 16th, 2023, 6pm, Polarraum Hamburg

The title of the wandering exhibition was inspired by the paintings of the Swiss artist Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741 Zurich - 1825 London) who painted different versions of "Incubus" (Nachtmahr). He made the world of dreams and visions subject of his paintings inspired by ghost stories.

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Conceived and put together by Marcus Sendlinger, the wandering exhibition "Alptraum" is travelling through the world since 2010 and connects artists from all over the world, reflecting on artistic, social and cultural circumstances individually concerning -The Nightmares- and their interpretation or reflection in drawing, collage, photography / works on paper.

 

The artists invited to contribute to this exhibition have been asked only to submit a work which has their direct hand in it, so physical contact and mark making on the surface of the material is implied in a manner, within this context, akin to the skrier, an ‘automatic writer’, a pyromancer’s stirring of the hot embers, an ectoplasmic medium – the hand that re-creates the subconscious wanderings of its owner. This naturally excludes many types of processes, but rather than excluding artists because their process prevents them from physical contact with their final piece, the artists invited to contribute have simply been asked to experiment within the pre-requisites of the theme. This offers them the opportunity to break the mold of their practice and try something slightly new, or indeed, old but discarded. Like George Orwell’s Room 101, in his predictive tale, ‘1984’, we all have our own version of what constitutes a nightmare, and for this reason, the project has been opened to a large number of artists whose many and varied personal nightmare versions, or visions, act to reflect this hugely variable human state of fears and phobias, pain and panic.

 

Alptraum, the German word for Nightmare, is an artist led project. It is a model which utilizes global communication between localized artist hubs and clusters to form an international grouping with the intent of opening a dialog about this subject across borders and cultures in order to delve into the stuff and mind murk that is collectively shared or completely random and unrelated, or individual specific within the syndrome of ‘The Nightmare’. Each artist draws on their own personal experience in order to visualize those anxieties which take them beyond everyday dreams.