Poster with a artwork of a house
Kunstwerk informationsstand SPD
Kunstwerk informationsstand SPD
Kunstwerk Collage eines AHsues 2d
Kunstwerk Collage eines AHsues 2d
Kunstwerk eines flachen dreidimendsionalen Kopfes
Kunstwerk eines flachen dreidimendsionalen Kopfes
Monochromes Bild
Monochromes Bild
Kohlezeichnung eines Schädels in düsterer Anmutung
Kohlezeichnung eines Schädels in düsterer Anmutung
Verkleidete Menschen als Büsche im Kleingarten, kaum zu erkennen
Verkleidete Menschen als Büsche im Kleingarten, kaum zu erkennen

Dialogues

Artist Couples from Hyvinkää (FI), Berlin and Moers (DE)

We cordially invite you to the opening
on Friday, 09 May 2025 from 7 pm.

Maija Helasvuo, Mika Karhu (Finland)
Susan Kempfer, Jörn Kempfer (Moers, Germany)

Line Wasner, Henrik Jacob 
(Berlin)

Painting, sculpture, drwaing, installation

Exhibition: 09 May – 13 July 2025

Acknowledgements in books today very often begin with sentences such as: ‘Many people were involved in the creation of this book.’ – indicating that public discourse is slowly moving away from the modern myth of the self-sufficient genius in the closet. People are social and political beings; all technology, art, all knowledge is always based on that of the past and expands and changes in communities. In our lives, we are all embedded in networks: many relationships with many people. The couple relationship is one of the closest, most intimate; in many couples, the partner is the person we spend the most time with. Perhaps the intimacy of the couple relationship is as much a myth as the lonely genius, or at least a cliché; in terms of intimate interpersonal relationships, too, there is currently a shift towards more open, diverse forms of cohabitation. Nevertheless, there are still couples, and with regard to the creation of works of art, to creativity, it is perhaps worth taking a look at possible mutual influence, mutual inspiration in couple relationships.
We have invited colleagues close to the gallery whose work we value and who we think are worth entering into a dialogue with.

Artists:

Maija Helasvuo’s work deals with the sculptural formulation of the vague, the fleeting, helplessness and other elusive phenomena, often in contrast to the massiveness of the material or the roughness of the processing. The artist works with visual metaphors that can refer to art history and social interaction at the same time. Together with Mika Karhu and other Finnish artists, she has been running the Finnish-German art space Toolbox since 2012, a project that promotes artistic exchange between Finland and Germany.
Maija Helasvuo, born in 1968 in Karelia, studied art at the Hyvinkää Art Schook, the Lahti Institute of Fine Art and the Turku Fine Art Academy.

Henrik Jacob kneads black and white modelling clay over photos, allowing the motifs to grow into the space. The size of his thumbprint determines the pixel size, which gives the images an unsettling blurriness. By allowing the malleable, plastic material to change even after a work has been completed, the artist is working on a kind of anti-art history that questions the significance of the final artistic product. In the exhibition, he presents smaller pictures as well as the folded SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) election campaign booth that he set up in Soldiner Kiez in Berlin shortly before the 2025 Bundestag elections. (Sibylle Peter Dieter)
Henrik Jacob, born 1972 in Dresden, studied fine art at the University of the Arts Bremen under Prof Rolf Thiele from 1994 to 2000. After stays abroad at the Winchester School of Art, Barcelona/Spain and at the Academie Galan/France, he became a master student of Rolf Thiele at the HfK Bremen in 2001. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 2000, where he has organised and curated the exhibition and project space Kulturpalast Wedding International since 2007. In 2016, the project space was honoured by the Berlin Senate with the award for artistic project spaces and initiatives.

In his art, Mika Karhu deals with human emotions – psychological phenomena – in connection with social structures, power and power relations, based on many years of studies in psychology, neurology, philosophy and political theory. A particular focus is on trauma, fear and vulnerability. In his gloomy ink paintings in shades of grey, black and white, the dark represents violence, depression, terror and what we (cannot) talk about; the light represents knowledge and hope.
Mika Karhu, born in 1969 in Joensuu, Karelia, Finland, studied fine arts and graphic arts at the North Karelia College of Art and Design, at the Institute of Printmaking at Lahti University, at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and received his doctorate in fine arts at Aalto University in Helsinki, where he now teaches art.

Susan Kempfer often uses found stones for her sculptures. Stones are an ancient raw material of human culture for the construction of buildings, the manufacture of cult objects, weapons and utensils. The weathering and erosion of rocks by wind, water, or ice, the dissolution, transport and subsequent deposition of their components, biochemically induced precipitation or evaporation or magmatic stone melting result in a wide variety of shapes and colours. The visible history of the stones is continued artistically by Susam Kempfer: the body of the naturally formed stone is sculpted and sculpturally transformed into a living, artistic object with a new face.
Susan Kempfer, born 1969 in Grimma, has been involved in painting for many years and studied sculpture / sculpture / installation at the Hochschule der bildenden Künste Essen. Since 2018 she has been a course instructor for drawing and sculptural design in public and private settings.

Jörn Kempfer is a painter and sculptor. Figurative and non-representational are the poles between which his painting moves. His painting is always concerned with the essential, i.e. the reality of the image. At the same time, for him the essence of the pictorial is mysteriously not something concrete, but abstraction, as in music, in which there is no tangible content. For Kempfer, reality has nothing to do with visual appearance.
Jörn Kempfer, born in 1958 in Duisburg–Homberg, grew up in Moers, studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1981–1986.
 Since then he has worked as a freelance painter and since 1994 also as a sculptor. He is a lecturer in adult education and artistic director of the Moers Summer Academy for Painting and Sculpture. Lecturer at the Scula di scultura di Peccia, Ticino, Switzerland and member of the BBK Berlin and the Kunstverein Duisburg, he lives alternately in Moers and Berlin

In 2024, Line Wasner has realised a performance together with Maarja Nurk in the allotment garden area Bornholm in Berlin. The two artists dressed up as bushes and did gardening work. For all those who couldn’t be there at the time, in the exhibition will be shown some film footage of this memorable performance. The very impressive bush costumes will be on display together with some of Line Wasner’s paintings.
Line Wasner paints and draws matters that don’t show much interest in notions of order and economy. The painting thus lurches idiosyncratically; in the diffuse, a clear image of something unclear emerges. Through sewing, folding, stuffing and appliqué, Line lately liberates her paintings from two dimensionality and releases them into space.
Line Wasner, born 1977, lives and works in Berlin. She studied Fine Arts and Environmental Art at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Glasgow School of Art. Since 2010 she also works as a scenic painter.