SMALL – an exploration of miniature

About

Miniature is a matter of perspective. When you look at the small it is not about centimeters but about relations, references, and a special way of seeing.

Miniatures can be representatives. Since the Middle Ages, people carried their beloved ones as close to the body as possible, in the form of painted mini portraits or amulets. In the case of Madame Pompadour, this quite incidentally revealed oneself as the king's mistress. Miniatures can be models, pulling a distant thing close or making something incomprehensible visible.

The small forces us to take a close look. The miniature is an experimental space and a projecting surface. It creates a sensual tension between recognition and alienation. In his Poetics of Space from 1957, Gaston Bachelard called miniatures „happy spaces“ – soap bubbles in which the world is a handy reflection. But even though we often refer the small to the good and contemplative, the miniature is not a purely utopian space after all. Over the past decades, it was especially the art which has repeatedly been infiltrated by horror. Reduction enables images which cannot be shown on a large scale.

Featuring:

Tjorg Douglas Beer, Dirk Bell, Julius von Bismarck, Fritz Bornstück, Carla Chan, Su Hwan Choi, Jeff Cowen, Zuzanna Czebatul, Björn Dahlem, Roger Eberhard, Martin Eder, Janine Eggert & Philipp Ricklefs, Yassir Ali Eldalaty, Lorenz Estermann, Ornella Fieres, Pius Fox, Jay Gard, Andreas Golder, Amélie Grözinger, Philip Grözinger, Gregor Hildebrandt, John Isaacs, Jeffrey James, Michelle Jezierski, Klaus Jörres, Markus Keibel, Felix Kiessling, Caroline Kryzecki, Lindsay Lawson, Florian Meisenberg, Bjørn Melhus, Toshihiko Mitsuya, David Nicholson, Przemek Pyszczek, Anselm Reyle, Peter Rösel, Michael Sailstorfer, Erik Schmidt, Pola Sieverding, Katja Strunz, Philip Topolovac, Iris Touliatou, Ulrich Urban, Elmar Vestner, Anna Vogel, Jorinde Voigt, Thomas Zipp, curated by Juliet Kothe and Annika von Taube