I only work with lost and found – Goldrausch 2024

About

I only work with lost and found brings together individual and heterogeneous works by 15 artists. The title describes what connects the works on display despite all their diversity: cyclical processes of artistic work as well as the examination of aesthetic, narrative, historical and political breaks and continuities.

Lost and found refers to unlearning and losing as active actions, to the hidden and repressed, and at the same time names a variety of possibilities for rediscovery, intervention and reassembly. At the heart of many of the works on display is the identification and rediscovery of buried knowledge, the confrontation with memory and loss, and the development of activist strategies inside and outside the field of art.

I only work with lost and found contains questions that are addressed in many of the works presented in the catalogue and exhibition: Is it actually possible to work with something that is neither lost nor found ? Doesn't every material, every concept, also tell its own story? And doesn't artistic processing and synthesis of material and concept always produce something new that overlays the story and at the same time reveals what was previously hidden? Who owns things and ideas when they are lost and rediscovered?

Initiating processes of discovery and accessibility on many levels are declared components of the exhibition set up by the artist, curator and Goldrausch alumna Mona Hermann together with Hannah Kruse, which aims to be experienced by as diverse an audience as possible.

The fifteen international visual artists working in Berlin present current works - paintings on canvas and in space, photography and multimedia installations, process-based experimental arrangements, performances, research-based documentation and sculptures. Many of the works are cross-genre and defy categorization; they are based on a cumulative, sustainable, research-based approach to nature, sources and materials.

The exhibiting artists* speak with a multi-voiced, collective, acting self. And with the emphasis on work - which means both artistic creation and pursuing a profession. The approach of the artists* in I only work with lost and found lies in process-based work, in making hidden things, transitions and connections tangible, and thus also includes the concern to actively expand the canon to include previously unnoticed and new positions.

The group exhibition is a cooperation between the Goldrausch artists' project and the Department of Culture and History of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district office in Berlin.

Work , the successful combination of artistic work and profession, is the core theme of the Goldrausch artists' project. The aim of the renowned program, which has been in existence since 1989, is to create equal visibility for artistic positions of women*. With its one-year course, the continuing education project supports visual artists* in developing professional know-how in solidarity and together, while at the same time bringing their work to the public.