The blue sky is a physical phenomenon. Based on scattering of light and its reflection by the water surface of the earth, the blue sky is not palpable and therefore could be described as a state of being. It evokes feelings like calmness, opposed to chaos and confrontation. Additionally, the blue sky is associated with yearning, infinity, expanse and freedom. In the context of science it stands as Blue Sky Thinking for a room in which new, limitless and not aim oriented ideas can be developed.
Grown up in the Ruhr area, the blue sky has become quite important to me. The art work is the beginning of an examination of the blue sky as a visual sign, emotional state and as well as a concept for a mostly Anthropocene environment. The art work is part of a project concentrating on the dialogue between my sculptures and drawings.
The project was funded by the programme Auf geht’s 2021 of the Land NRW.
www.babettemartini.com​​​​​​​

10 years ago, an open, still unregistered bowling club emerged from the basement of the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf: the so-called "Kegelclub", which has been meeting regularly since summer 2010. Despite a longer, intermediate break, the loss of the first regular bowling alley, the theft of a full bowling treasury and a sometimes more or less serious bookkeeping, "we" still exist.
The exhibition presents the most long-lived and formative representatives:inside of the local bowling sport as well as the current regular team.

Artists:
Cornelius Grau
Jody Korbach
Petar Lobar
Wilhelm Müller-Thurgau
Doppel-Rainer
Willeke van Ravenhorst
Hagen Gernot Trippelsdorf
Benjamin Zanon
Dr. Zeichnungen

The building of today's Künstlerhaus Dortmund belonged to the Westphalia coal mine at the beginning of the 20th century. The reference for the sound installation "Pneuma" is the historical use of the exhibition room in the basement as a mortuary, where the bodies of miners who died in accidents were laid out.
The electroacoustic composition audible in the sound installation is based on audio recordings of respirators used in medicine for life-sustaining ventilation of persons with exposed self-breathing.
Pneuma is the name used by the ancient Greeks not only for the air we breathe, but also for the spirit in particular. Pneuma was thought of as the life force, it was responsible for physiological processes and moved through the veins along with the blood. Pneuma was considered to be the soul force moving man.
www.gegenort.com

The city as a pulsating pattern, a swaying, breathing video image in the middle of which new "gates" of mostly architectural set pieces seem to be opening all the time. A silhouette wanders along a lonely coast, a spherical sound with apparent choral elements and an at times dull metallic rubbing breathing surrounds the images. An ebbing and flowing without a destination, the basis of which is the city sounds and the rhythm and blues music of two street bands.
www.andreasdrewer.de

Once the imagination is given access to the interior of an object, this interior can be made responsible for the extension of its surface into space. My sculptures always refer to something inside and something underlying them. The enclosing material follows a certain principle, and what it conceals stands out blurredly on the surface. Objects are created that have the characteristics of shells, casings or even skin. The sculpture becomes an actor of external influences and internal conditions. It becomes the materialized boundary between two form-giving forces.

"STRONZO FILMS-MAKONGO TV-ISLAM AGENCY" presents to you the black half-breed demon, half-panther, the second-born son of primordial mother Mawu, who spat the bone from which the universe springs. Soon enough, once and for all, there will be an end to the colonial pig priests. The zone is black magic, black land, the future and the past are black. I present the primeval impresario of cheap films, the great, the unique...SAPATA!" (D. Wagner und S. Müller)

Jule K.'s pictures move on the ridge between reality and fantasy world, without committing to either. Mostly a real background serves as a starting point for a free play with color and form. Jule K.'s imagination is fed by trash culture, comics, literature, film and television or even fashion. Graphically, the works are highly simplified and forward-looking. The figures and situations are only specified as far as necessary, the pictorial space is flat, poster-like, spatial illusion or lighting effects are almost completely dispensed with. In addition to the charm that these pictures exude, this reduction contributes significantly to their captivating effect. They have something like a diagram. This leaves the viewer a great deal of freedom in both interpretation. Jule K. maneuvers the figures through a colorful universe, expressing her own desires, feelings, and thoughts. Although there is also violence, anger or sadness in the pictures, but their basic mood is quite positive. The artist thus presents the viewer with a warm but by no means harmless world from a female point of view." She has wit. She has something to say and does it with comics: Jule K. With a cheeky stroke of the pen, Jule K. opens up her world. Comics by women for everyone. Colorful, of course, and with a good dose of kitsch and irony." (Arte)

I am interested in places. What happens there - who acts - does what - consequences and states. Such observations let me choose certain materials, which usually seem commonplace, are commonplace or not. Forms emerge that seem between very abstract and very concrete. It is about creating worlds and linking worlds, creating potentials. Sculpture. Here, actionist moments play just as much a role as kinetic and traditional sculptural ones, which deal with volume, mass, aggregate states and space. My current body work is attempting to create effective patterns provoked by the digestion of my physical daily life, as well as my digital daily life. I am interested in the cognitive conventionality these objects provide as part of our environment (our nature). These highly consumable objects are catalyst to consumptive satisfaction. I am interested in re-adapting the natural state of these materials to explore forms that activate human attraction. 

Cornelius Grau: "I have diligently dusted off works from fellow students and friends (mostly students/graduates of the art academies in Düsseldorf, Osnabrück, Stuttgart and Berlin) over the past few years and built up a small collection."
A selection of the collection was on display at the Laboratorium in 2013. This gave rise to the idea of also presenting the artists represented individually - at alternating venues in the house and parallel to the main program.

In our laboratory you will get an insight into the beginnings of a collection. Cornelius Grau, student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and member of the Künstlerhaus: "In recent years I have diligently dusted off works from fellow students and friends (mostly students/graduates of the art academies in Düsseldorf, Osnabrück, Stuttgart and Berlin) and built up a small collection. Mainly small sculptures and smaller paintings. But there are also videos and performance props. Most of the works are kept naive to funny. So there are aluminum toasts, a toilet brush, fake dvd covers, I-phone replicas and so on to see. But there is also seriousness and also the full trash. The whole thing is supplemented by a few flea market and bulky waste finds. So I'll be presenting a wild mix in a small space."

Parallel to the exhibition "Blue Bloom" 19 members and artists in the network show editions, multiples and small formats. For the second time, the Laboratorium is exclusively dedicated to the supposedly unspectacular small format, which offers intimacy, privacy and immediacy. Supplemented by current individual catalogs, which can be purchased directly. Multiples, editions, small formats and catalogs from 7.99 to 600 euros.

"With the door into the house", the idea of defining a building exclusively by the connection of its doorways by means of a planked corridor ... "Visual aids" that allow their user to look in different directions at the same time ... or "Watching a cube", a cube made of 13 meters of cardboard tube and 75 mirrors that direct the user's incoming gaze through the tube system, allowing him to discover his own feet over a distance of 6.5 meters ...
Caspar Walbeck worked in the laboratory for a total of three months. The resulting works reflect his exploration of questions about space and the perception of space.

In der Installation "Sightseeing" geht es mir um die Verschiebung, das Konterkarieren der gewohnten Sichtweisen. Der Betracher wird mit einer anderen Perspektive konfrontiert – in diesem Fall in eine niedrigere und fremde Ebene – ohne seine Sichtposition ändern zu müssen.

This exhibition in the laboratory of Elly Valk-Verheijen shows a site-specific mural.
It relates directly to the walls of the laboratory and to the existing lighting. The white walls - with their many irregularities, just highlighted by the lighting - reflect the white artificial light of the neon tubes.
Digital photographs of the empty walls - taken under these lighting conditions without flash - were extremely increased in their color resolution, or color saturation, by means of computer technology: surprising constellations of separated shapes (pixels) in pure colors could thus be brought out.
Small selected square sections result in a special composition.
These elements no longer belong to a virtual world of imagination, but can be experienced in real terms - visually and haptically - directly on the wall as painting.
On display is a combination of the possibilities of digital image processing and a realization in the technique of a traditional wall painting.

Issues of countless newspaper magazines offer us daily floods of images. The consumer is offered a selective reality. Digital image processing makes it possible to show only what the publisher wants to convey.
Ulrike Stockhaus deals with the other side, the reverse side of these images. She cuts out the depicted human poses and uses their backsides to create a new scenario. In the installation she goes one step further: she develops a spatiality between projections and reflections. Thus, the viewer becomes part of the illusion "from the other side of reality."

"Eigenheim" thematizes an everyday niche. As a reflex to the current discussion about home ownership, the exhibition points the viewer to one of the most popular owner-occupied homes. An element is moved from its natural environment to a new context and awaits interaction on several levels. It may be entered and furnished. One can dream and continue building. Irritation by the supposedly familiar and the appeal of experiencing space go hand in hand. Touches of any kind are desired and will be documented.

A hammock and almost 3000 balloons, which initially take up the entire volume of the room, are the protagonists of the installation. The installation begins with a live video transmission from the laboratorium; it is only finally created before the eyes of the visitors on the evening of the opening. In a performance lasting about 18 minutes, An Seebach and Sam Ashley burst the balloons, opening the space to the visitors. In the resulting spatial situation, random structures mix with the artist's staging. The audience is invited to use the hammock and in this unusual position, to view the installation on the floor and under the ceiling.

The luminous structures are based on night-flight photographs of the Ruhr region. Digital collage has created superstructures that can no longer be clearly assigned to the surface of the earth, but are reminiscent of images of star clusters, galaxies, or supernovae. Projected onto several layers of semi-transparent fabric panels swaying in the wind of two fans, a spatiality is created that underscores the ephemeral character of the motifs. The mechanical click of the projectors as they change slides and the hiss of their ventilation systems complete the alien scenery.

44 lamp housings including electronics and sockets are processed into one room, which contains a total of 88 neon fluorescent tubes TLD 58W/25. Together they require a power of about 5104 watts. The natural "hum" of the neon tubes is extremely amplified.