Sagenhaft! 40 Jahre Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie

10 When we use the word “legendary” we do that in order to mark something as probably unreal or of unknown whereabouts. Like the legendary countries Omir and Punt, which, as legend has it, possessed incredible treasures. Or, as the imagined reality has a great and astonishing effect, to characterize something in its extraordinary appeal, connected to the legendary. The legendary always entails some- thing unheard-of, exciting, hitherto unseen, and unu- sual. What is always like that is art. Art shows new, as yet unseen images, products of the imagination as well as interpretations of reality; it‘s gripping, takes our breath away, astonishes and surprises us. So it is simply a consequence when the jubilee-show of the Samuelis Baumgarte Gallery chooses this as its motto: “legendary”. For 40 years the gallery has been giving art a forum, the established and the cutting-edge, and the field of activity has constantly been widened and new chapters of art history have been written. The list of names gives ample proof of this: Joseph Albers and Ruth Baumgarte, Tony Cragg, Fernando Botero and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Pablo Picasso set a high level of aspiration, seconded by Rolf Kuhlmann, Kirsten Geisler and Patricia Thoma, Christine Schindler, Cornelius Qua- beck, and Nicolas Grospierre, just to name a few. Instead of arranging a number of single works within the confines of the white cube, the gallery has asked the Hamburg based floral artist Mario Mahlstedt to turn the gallery into a magical space of aesthetic experience, which can be seen as the materializa- tion of the emotional range of art, as a staging of adventure and experience, which also means its in- tensification. Mahlstedt is always inspired by things and develops his concepts under the influence of the circumstances and the genius loci, combines blossoms, scents, colors and forms, all this always in relation to the characteristics of the materials, as for him textures and surfaces have a great importance. Thus a continuous aesthetic tension is achieved: contrast and completion, beguile and embellish, alienate and combine, limitation, support, and experiment make for an energetic balance for the viewer to immerse himself in, to permeate it with his own ideas, to make experiences and live through aesthetic adventures. He doesn‘t set up his floral installations as to compete with the art- works, rather as an accompaniment, or even car- rier. Mahlstedt never works with little objects. No tiny figures, little animals or cute mushrooms. His credo is: away from the taste of the masses, break up norms and the common in a positive way. So we wander through worlds of poetical power, unheard- of and unseen ones, magical ones which are legend- ary, but do not refer to existing, traditional tales of yore in which we hear of “full many a wonder” – it is the staging itself, that‘s what it is about. A carpet of flowers on the stairs accompanies peo- ple on the journey of life, showing the way forward, maybe reminding us of the path in Alice‘s Wonder- land, but it doesn‘t disappear. So it goes on in high spirits, the journey through art, from Omir to Punt and back. There isn‘t any doubt that, if this were the crossroads of Hercules, he would have chosen it. It is obvious for Mario Mahlstedt to use flowers, because in the Western tradition the flower is the most common, most comprehensible, and most popular symbol for emotion and empathy. Flow- ers create an entree, offer a common basis of un- derstanding. But they also spread their individual magic with their sometimes even bizarre forms and colors, their richness of appearance, which shows us the variety of the world, which also means the diversity of art. In the rooms with the different wall installations a visual blending of experience takes place: The visi- tor experiences the art and, at the same time, he learns about the quality of his aesthetic experience through the installation. This world seems familiar to him, but by and by the awareness grows that he is offered a new point of view of his seemingly sure world of recognition. The awareness of the fact that any presence is always also characterized by the simultaneity of the incompatible, whose contradic- ”From Omir to Punt and Back“ 40 years Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie: A Stage in the History of Art by Dr. Gerhard Charles Rump

Seitenübersicht