For forty years, the Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung has been supporting young artists at the start of their careers. Its partnership with the MMK enables the Scholars from the area of the visual arts to exhibit their works at the MMK 3. The Scholars of 2016/17 Richard Leue and Lisa Pahlke come from the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, where both developed a highly individual artistic style in the course of their studies.

The exploration of line as a space-defining, volume-forming element is characteristic of Lisa Pahlke’s (b. 1987) large-scale works on paper, which spark associations of abstract landscape depictions. Lined up in dense rows, the felt-tip lines yield organic structures suggesting movement and thus challenging the limits of our perception.

Within the framework of his Ponto Scholarship, Richard Leue (b. 1986) travelled Northern Iraq, where he captured his impressions of the peoples life in different ways. His figurative drawings are like snapshots that provide insights into the living conditions and the conflict-ridden reality of present-day Northern Iraq, which is home to the so-called autonomous Kurdish territory.