Exhibition

head-to-head-to-head

4 Mar 2022 – 1 May 2022

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
Closed
Wednesday
Closed
Thursday
12:00 – 19:00
Friday
12:00 – 19:00
Saturday
10:00 – 18:00
Sunday
Closed

Free admission

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Galerie Georg Nothelfer

Berlin, Germany

Event map

group exhibition on the theme of head

About

"Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction."

Francis Picabia (1879 - 1953)

An exhibition on the topic of "head", "head-to-head-to-head". Images and terms impose themselves: Smart head, hothead, stupid-head, curlyhead, cool head, egghead, bullhead, pighead, blockhead. Then, at the latest, a change of direction is indicated:

First change of direction: from the portrait painting of earlier centuries to large-scale photographs today, we look into a face, ask ourselves who this other person is, what makes them up, what is reflected in their face.  Even death masks derive their fascination from that. And sometimes it is only when we look in a mirror that we realise how tired or weary we are. Perhaps the image before our eyes also blurs, becomes abstract, as if a stranger.

Second change of direction: "To be or not to be" Hamlet already mused with a skull in his hand. With the bony skull, we move from the individuality of the face to questions of general interest, to "ultimate questions" about origins, the meaning of life and the question of what awaits us after death. It is not only in the "Divine Comedy" that we are guided by powerful images - at all times artists have found images for our fears and longings.

Third change of direction: The fact that we can think about ourselves, about our fellow human beings, about the world, about philosophical and artistic issues - we owe all this to the brain encased in the bony skull. It processes our sensory perceptions, controls our actions, plans ahead, phantasises and dreams - but it is also prone to malfunction. In old age, it can become as full of holes as a strainer. Sometimes the brain develops into a breeding ground for fears, hallucinations and delusions. Some texts and pictures also bear witness to this.

Fourth change of direction: heads can learn to walk. In children's drawings, the image of the human being begins as a head-like structure on legs, as a so-called " head-footer". Many artists use this "most concise pictorial formula to represent a whole human being". We find such images from the Middle Ages to our own time, as well as in the work of artists we classify as "art brut" or "outsider art". Sculptures of head-footer animals can be found in cultures around the world and at all times in human history.

Fifth change of direction: The head may run away as a head-footer through the history of art and culture and show many other facets - but as Goethe already wrote in a letter of 10 July 1772 to Herder: "Poor man, about whom the head is everything."

(Text by Hartmut Kraft)

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