Birgit Werres Cat. Kunstverein Heilbronn / Kunstverein Schwäbisch Hall / Märkisches Museum Witten

Birgit Werres can do magic. She manages to transform a simple wire into a sweeping line in space, to unite a ball of tension belts in the dynamic and complex interplay of forms, colors, and textures of a cotton net. Playful and austere, her works unfold a dynamic in the space, which may be described by the fullness of movement of the Baroque just as much as by a minimalist decision that seeks to dispense with everything unnecessary and trusts in the potential of the material. Since the 1990s, the artist has been roaming the streets, construction sites, industrial wastelands, factories, and production facilities in search of materials for her sculptures and wall objects. For she practices recycling of an entirely different kind: metals, plastics, containers, wire, and indefinable “stuff.” These are telling relics, remnants that bear traces of use, minimalist as well as beautiful! It carries a story within itself and at the same time becomes an object that assumes a new position.

Matthia Loebke, born 1963, artistic director of the Kunstverein Heilbronn, is curator and publishes monographic catalogs, among others about Yoshitaka Amano, Markus Lüpertz, Olaf Metzel, Enoc Perez, Michael Schmidt, Michael Venezia, and Silke Wagner. In Cologne she was an assistant to Donald Judd and gained her doctorate on Dan Flavin. Dirk Steimann (born 1967) is a business economist, art historian, author, curator, and was museum director at the Märkisches Museum Witten from until 2018. He previously worked as a curator for the Gasometer Oberhausen, the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Dusseldorf, the Ruhrfestspiele and Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, the Museum Bochum, the Skulptur Biennale Münsterland, and from 2003 to 2006 he was a scientific assistant to the director of the Kunsthochschule Kassel. Since 2018 he is now head of the Resort for Culture and Tourism in Schwaebisch Hall. Christiane Meyer-Stoll is a German art historian. She has been working as a curator at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein since 2000 and is a member of the management team there. From 1993 to 1999, she was a senior curator in the development of the private museum of the Goetz Collection Munich. In Liechtenstein she conceives and realizes exhibitions on outstanding artists’ positions and increasingly focuses on Arte Povera and historical US-American positions. With Snoeck, for example, she has published a pioneering monograph on Gary Kuehn.