Colour In ReflexThe Wandering Exhibition

Art Climbing the Alps

by Eva Wißkirchen

Katrin Kampmann’s thought is prone toward investigating antagonisms. She tracks down the paradoxes of the world in which she lives, groups them together around herself, and unravels complex pictures within the spaces that emerge between them. It is in this manner that, among the urban environment of her studio near Alexanderplatz, the Berlin-based artist became aware of the surprising yet ever-growing sense of yearning—one toward an authentic experience of nature and for the existence of a more perfect world—that would finally lead toward an ecologisation of manifold aspects of life. The notion of the hiking holiday was dusted off for presentation and equipped with both the stylishness of lifestyle magazines and the practical, functional garb of the brave new outdoor supplier—and this in a city which, over the past few years, has continued to gain in urbanity and become a magnet for artists across the globe. On a daily basis, and in every part of the city, innumerable exhibitions, openings and performances incessantly wrangle for attention. Due to the sheer number of events, however, it is questionable as to how many of them are ever actively received. For Kampmann, this state of affairs resulted in a consideration of the extent to which this kind of reception might be altered if art were, instead, to be exhibited in places where its unexpected presence were rather out of place, or even irritating. In order to conduct an experiment of this kind, the Alpine mountain landscape seemed especially suitable—a traditional place of yearning, highly loaded with cliché-rich images on the one hand, and so truly remote on the other, that it thrusts the wanderer into self-contemplation and a state of self-reliance. It is thus that the art project The Wandering Exhibition emerged, in which painting, performance and photography interact. In preparation for the hiking-journey performance, the painter Katrin Kampmann consciously allowed the many references to mountain regions that are to be found in art, literature and philosophy—but also in mass media such as television, ‘homeland films’ and advertisement—to work freely upon her before distilling the resulting impressions to produce fifteen small-format canvases, which play with the theme in all of its facets. Kampmann’s paintings are well-known for their semantic, painterly and technical complexity, and, here as well, multifarious levels have been layered to beget a veritably mountainous range of themes, figures and emotions. The paintings were then strapped to the backs of rucksacks and thus carried by Kampmann—together with Felicitas Aull und Eva Wißkirchen (who assisted the artist in organising and implementing the project)—over the Berlin High Trail through the Zillertal Alps. Selected paintings were then shown at each of the Alpine huts along the way, and—on the seventh day—an exhibition was opened at the Berlin Hut, in which all of the fifteen paintings were finally shown. Hanging the paintings in the various huts had also provided Kampmann with the opportunity to produce a series of photographs which document the encounter between classic mountain hut interiors and contemporary art. Additionally, a series of pinhole camera photos depicting alpine mountain scenes were to emerge after being developed upon the return to the flatlands. In this way, the suspense surrounding the question as to whether the photographic recordings would finally turn out and come up to expectations remained unbroken right up to the very end. The whole undertaking was documented by the photographer Henrik Jordan. The cultural advisor for the Berlin division of the German Alpine Club (Warmund Koch) had been the Alpine guide, and a number of art-loving alpinists had accompanied the touring exhibition. Once having arrived back in Berlin, Kampmann translated what were now no longer merely conveyed impressions but rather first hand experiences onto large-format canvases.

English translation by Nathan Moore