One might ask oneself: "Dead or alive?" The term still life (French: nature morte) refers to the depiction of inanimate or motionless objects (e.g. flowers, fruit, hunting spoils, utensils of all kinds) arranged according to formal, compositional, and aesthetic criteria. But what makes a still life come alive? Each of the artists exhibited here has their own answer to this question...

Fiona Ackerman arranges the most diverse things in the broadest sense - working materials such as paint, stretcher frames, and paper, drawn symbols, but also copies of her own paintings with great artistic freedom and compositional sophistication. The unconventional ensemble nevertheless radiates harmony and lightness - is this due to the call of the sea (Vocation by the Sea)?

Uwe Bremer also works with different levels. How do you make physical theories the subject of still lifes? Can waves or particles and mathematical concepts such as tesseracts take on colors and shapes and interact with everyday objects such as playing cards or pretzels? They can!

Timur Çelik masterfully stages everyday objects and brings them to life: his lonely suitcase on a conveyor belt - a modern version of the vanitas still life - is a tragic figure in its solitude. You feel sorry for this suitcase, and how could something that generates pity not be alive?

But there are also abstract still lifes to discover. Gregor Hiltner, Juan Logan and Ernst Weil know how to compose geometric shapes, symbols, and gestures in such a way that, being ordered next to, above, below, before or behind each other are caught in a poetic, sometimes dramatic exchange: red dots, grey, black, blue and white squares, bars and lines, yellow semicircles, or pink clouds of color are allies or adversaries in a dialogue on canvas or paper.

Karl Kunz and Natascha Mann combine old and new in form, texture, and color in a very lively way to make mundane things appear enigmatic in a unique atmospheric density and question familiar hierarchies. In Paul Schwietzke's work, organic and mechanical, solid and flying heavy and light forms appear together to fundamentally challenge our measuring and viewing habits.

There is much more to discover and unravel. You will be amazed at how alive dead nature can be...