Felix Droese: End of the sign. Materials and texts on “dort 1981–83”
The exhibition organized by RealismusStudio at the nGbK, which travelled to Brühl, Cologne, and Braunschweig, showed Felix Droese’s “dort 1981–83” in full for the first time. The monumental installation consists of thirteen wooden rods, woodcuts, and black cloths, creating variations on the theme of “cross in the shadow of swords” and reflecting themes that recur in Droese’s work: the ordeal of human existence, sacrifice, guilt, and salvation. The artist had planned a major monograph with a different publisher that would also have included all of his preliminary drawings, but this project was cancelled. Since some of the original documents were still in the hands of this other publisher, the nGbK catalogue, originally planned as a booklet to accompany the exhibition, was expanded. As well as a biography, a list of exhibitions, sources of inspiration, and short excerpts from texts by Franz Kafka, George Orwell, and Søren Kierkegaard, the publication also contains pictures of individual works and installation views.

Ed.: nGbK

Work group: Valdis J. Āboliņš, Ingrid Krolow, Freya Mülhaupt, Udo Ropohl, Barbara Straka