Language reveals to us a profound insight: “I am not my body, I have a body.” As a consequence of the realization that the body is not one's own person, the question arises as to the substance that animates the human being. 
The exhibition is dedicated to this question on the basis of the works of art on display. The focus is on exploring the factors that determine the creation of an image. Which energy flows lead to the picture? How or what brings the work to life? The exhibition explores the subtle levels and invisible spaces inherent in a work of art. 

Isabella Fürnkäs

"The Desiring Machines is a sound installation that consists of 220 individually hand-blown glass droplets suspended from a mash net across the ceiling within a two-channel immersive audio soundscape. Each glass drop is unique and offset in its own way, some with streams of deep red ruby glass inside them. Entering the room activates a soundscape, which creates a dialog with the viewer suggested by the title – we are inside a web of desire. The artist writes, “The glass bodies, composed like fixed movement in space, give the impression of a social fabric. Everything is interwoven, everything flows”. A lyrical arc of the work spans tells how productive desire can be, how desire bridges gaps and is a force of creation. Attentive observation reveals engravings in some drops - words in which overriding values, longings and desires crystallize literally onto glass. A kind of journey through the human body begins, from its needs and processes to the mundane circulation of bodily fluids. The red hue of some drops can evoke associations with blood but also other connotations of red, a signifier of passion, like glass, something fragile or frozen as if a manifested snapshot, a frozen state of the fluid, the ephemeral, the intangible." (Elke Kania about The Desiring Machines as part of the exhibition you are here at Kunsthaus NRW)

www.isabellafuernkaes.com

www.instagram.com/isabellafuernkaes

Andrea Knobloch

The human body is still primarily plastically deformed and upgraded. However, the latest methods, such as the CRISPER/CAS gene scissors, already enable more subtle remodelling of the inner constitution and thus also the outer appearance. If one assumes that living bodies are complex interwoven systems of interdependencies, even a minimal intervention could trigger an uncontrollable chain of consequences. 
Andrea Knobloch's drawings are speculations about the disfigurements, unwanted mutations or sudden metamorphoses that bodies treated in this way conceal behind their optimised facades. On initially mechanically traced, discoloured, perforated or frottaged drawing grounds, out-of-shape entities are revealed, trapped in indeterminate spaces. Homo Faber's urge to shape his own body is an extreme symptom of his continued distancing from the naturally given. Everything becomes negotiable, nothing remains a secret, the inscrutable and the miraculous disappear. Could art, in its search for inspiring companions through profaned realities, offer all this an exile?

www.andreaknobloch.de

www.instagram.com/studio_andreaknobloch

Ayumi Paul

The one-shot video Earth Rhythms, 2020 shows the artist Ayumi Paul standing on a concrete surface, which is partly overlooked by tropical tree tops. As she tunes into the rotation of the earth with her violin, the sky gradually, almost imperceptibly, grows darker. After everything visible has disappeared into the darkness, the playing continues to resound with the rhythms of the spinning planet. As is often the case in Paul’s work, in Earth Rhythms the compositional contexts are expanded to include the parameters of space and time in such a way that they transcend purely human nature. The artist shifts perceptual perspectives and something non-audible becomes palpable. 

Concept, performance, director: Ayumi Paul 
Camera and production: Victoria Clay 
Assistant camera and production: José González 

www.ayumipaul.com

www.instagram.com/ayumipaul

Jeannette Schnüttgen

Jeannette Schnüttgen's works move between drawing, sculpture and installation. Her starting point is often a concrete thought, a memory, an experienced/perceived atmosphere or something she has actually seen, which she then (further) processes artistically. Typical, especially for the sculptural works, is also the development of a prototype, which is then realized in different variations, similar to an algorithm. 
For the Künstlerhaus Dortmund, she will develop a new site-specific work that deals with immaterial and ephemeral phenomena. The ambivalent, the incomprehensible, the ambiguous, the in-between and threshold states are of particular interest to her. 

www.jeannetteschnuettgen.de

www.instagram.com/jeannetteschnuettgen

Bettina Scholz

Bettina Scholz's sketchbooks are densely filled with drawings, usually drawn quickly, that pour onto the paper with charcoal, pastels or pencil. The artist draws every morning, usually before sunrise at around 5 a.m. - in the transitional phase between sleeping and waking, in which the slowly awakening consciousness shapes the new day. But also in her other work in the studio or when travelling, the books fill up, in which the incidental finds space, just as much as large, extravagant ideas. The artist plays with unrestrained stylistic diversity, which enables her to slip into different roles and (artistic) identities.

www.bettinascholz.de

www.instagram.com/bettischolz

Jessica Maria Toliver

In dialogue with the material paper, the artist Jessica Maria Toliver often works withexisting structures and environments, which she sometimes changes and manipulates. This results in objects and installations that visibly include these site-specific parameters. Toliver likes to proceed conceptually and lets the respective situation guide her process. Based on just a few selected materials, she explores questions about the contrastbetween rough, archaic form and delicate fragility, whereby she is interested in theauthenticity and reactivity of her material. The process of creation, which also includes procedural thinking, is just as important to the artist as the realized, physical work. In her engagement with paper, she experiences the material as a strong, permeable, fragile,receptive, demanding and surprising personality - as a breathing being that communicates with her and that she never tires of watching and listening to- that invites her to shape it artistically.

www.toliver.de

www.instagram.com/toliverjessicamaria

Jorinde Voigt

In her work, Jorinde Voigt observes and explores the inner processes of perception in relation to various aspects and subjects such as affects and emotions, imagination, memory, sensory experience, natural and cultural phenomena, scientific data, interpersonal actions, and relationships. Since her early work, Jorinde Voigt has taken an analytical approach, understanding her subjects as dynamic situations whose state of being is in constant change. Within a conceptual approach Jorinde Voigt has been expanding her work beyond the medium of drawing in recent years, including and experimenting with painterly elements, collage, sculpture, design, and music.

www.jorindevoigt.com

www.instagram.com/jorindevoigt

Thomas Zitzwitz

„[...] Thomas Zitzwitz' paintings have a glow and a lightness that invites us to joyfully welcome the openness to which we are exposed in our actions and to shape them with a light hand. Let us lead our lives like a painter holding a spray gun! And let us not be frightened by the surprises it holds in store for us. If reality were not open to them, we would not be able to act at all. Being at the mercy of chance is the price of freedom. But freedom is beautiful when we take it lightly [...]“
(Excerpt from: Björn Vedder, Die Vögel des Zufalls, Galerie Norbert Arns, 2022)

www.zitzwitz.com

www.instagram.com/thomaszitzwitz

I AM NOT MY BODY

8 February - 16 March 2025

Preview / Curator's tour
Friday, 7 February, 5.30 pm

Opening
Friday, 7 February, 7 pm

Opening Act: DJ Set A2iCE & BO3

Artists:
Isabella Fürnkäs
Andrea Knobloch
Ayumi Paul
Jeannette Schnüttgen
Bettina Scholz
Jessica Maria Toliver
Jorinde Voigt
Thomas Zitzwitz

Curator:
Adriane Wachholz

Curator's tour
Sunday, 9 February, 5 pm
Saturday, 15 March, 5 pm

Finissage
Kunst_Körper_Kunst – A meditative experience to the exhibition with Suzanne Josek
Sunday, 16 March, 5 pm Uhr

Parallel im Laboratorium
Adriane Wachholz – One Moment In Time

Kindly supported by:
Kulturbüro Dortmund