EWG Molsberg / Barn

June 15, 2025 - July 13, 2025Opening date: June 15, 2025, 2:00 pm
Opening Sunday, June 15, 2025, at 2:00 pm
Welcome and introduction at 2:30 pm
June 15 to July 13 / Summer break / September 7 to October 5, 2025

Press, Politik&Kultur Zeitschrift des Deutschen Kulturrats

The Emmanuel Walderdorff Gallery, idyllically situated in the heart of the Westerwald region, is surrounded by forests, meadows, and an adjacent landscaped park. Redstarts breed in the exhibition barn, while falcons nest in the gable next door, and in the evenings, the courtyard is surrounded by deer.

So what could be more appropriate than making nature itself the protagonist of our next exhibition and asking fundamental questions about art and nature? How do we experience nature? What defines its quality?

In nature, our first gaze is guided by information, as we seek to orient ourselves even in an unfamiliar environment. In a second, psychological dimension, we strive for a sense of security. We perceive concrete shapes, colors, sounds, and smells. Our perception becomes holistic when we manage to connect spontaneous experiences with inner experiences, as well as our knowledge and its interpretation.

The exhibition "nature pulse" is about observation and the inner gaze, about beauty and poetry, about sensuality and meaning. We cordially invite you to join us on this journey of discovery and explore the connection between art and nature.

Artists:

Liv Jung-König

Svätopluk Mikyta

Alexander von Schlieffen

Philipp Schönborn

Ansgar Skiba

Attila Szűcs

Ralf Witthaus

hill, oil on gesso on plywood, 50x50cm. 2022-23

A 2022-23 work, oil on gesso-primed plywood. I've always been captivated by the way light can transform forms, how the very materiality of paint seems to spring to life on the surface. Here, the mountain motif is merely a starting point. An archetypal form that, however, finds its true meaning in the painting process, in the interplay of light and shadow, in the layering of colors. These vertical streaks, like a kind of curtain of light or an energy flow, simultaneously erode and construct the landscape. There's an element of nature's forces in it, yet it can also be a sort of inner vision, a fragment of a memory. In my technique, I appreciate this hovering between concrete representation and abstraction. The vibrancy of the yellows and oranges, their contrast with the deeper, darker tones, generates tension. The plasticity of oil paint allows the image to almost build itself. The translucency of the layers, the running of the paint, the gestures that also embrace chance – these are all integral to the process through which the image is born. I didn't aim to paint a specific landscape, but rather a state, an atmosphere. A space that is at once familiar and strange. In my painting, I explore how everyday motifs, light phenomena, and sensations of space become bearers of a more universal, meditative content. This 'Mountain' too is such an experiment: capturing form and material, light and time, in a single, condensed moment.