Unrestrained Self-Movements in BLMK Cottbus: Art with Photography in the GDR
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Unrestrained Self-Movements: Photography as an Artistic Space of Freedom
The Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art in the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus dedicates the exhibition Unrestrained Self-Movements. Art with Photography in the GDR to a distinctive image practice of the 1980s. The focus is on photography not as neutral documentation, but as material for self-assertion, self-expansion, and boundary crossing.
A Different Photography of the GDR
In the tightly regulated society of the GDR, artists developed a subculture-influenced art with photography. Their works broke free from journalistic-documentary understandings of imagery and reflected the conditions of their own medium. Photography became an artistic gesture, an experimental field, and a means to reimagine reality.
Between Action, Body, and Image
The exhibition presents photographic positions that are associated with performance, intervention, installation, and conceptual methods. Body, space, action, and attitude enter into a tense dialogue. Serial orders, deliberately anti-aesthetic impulses, and open design processes expand the view of photography art in the GDR.
Artistic Positions Beyond the Official Image
Works from artists including Claus Bach, Tina Bara, Micha Brendel, Kurt Buchwald, Klaus Elle, Irene Fischer, Thomas Florschuetz, Else Gabriel, Rainer Görß, Klaus Hähner-Springmühl, Wolf Kahlen, Matthias Leupold, Olaf Martens, Cornelia Schleime, Erasmus Schröter, and Gabriele Stötzer will be on display. The exhibition brings artists into focus whose non-state-supported image languages have been less present for a long time.
Curation and Art Historical Context
The exhibition concept is developed by the external curator Christoph Tannert. The presentation connects holdings from the collection of the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art with loans and places the works within the cultural history of the late GDR. This creates a precise view of an art movement that understands photography as an idea, action, and aesthetic experience.
Art Experience in the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus
The exhibition atmosphere of the former Diesel Power Plant creates an impressive resonance space for the experimental works. In the view of the works, photographic series, performative traces, and conceptual image forms meet. Colors, shapes, bodies, and materials generate an aesthetic experience that makes historical constraints and artistic liberation immediately tangible.
The exhibition offers an education-oriented art experience for all who are interested in photography, modern art, and East German art history. Those who want to understand the diversity of art with photography in the GDR and experience its political and poetic power live should visit this exhibition in the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus.
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- Website: https://www.blmk.de/programm/ungebremste-selbstbewegungen/
