Where I End and You Begin

Relationships are the origin of life. People are born into a network of relationships, which can be caring and relaxed but also stressful and hurtful. They also play a major role in art - be it in direct encounters with art or between artists and the people they portray. Ultimately, it is about the encounter with the other and the self, which artists have repeatedly thematised with their portraits and self-portraits.

The leitmotif of this year's presentation of the LBBW Collection at art KARLSRUHE ‘Where I End and You Begin’ from 20 to 23 March in Hall 3 of the fair is dedicated to the diverse approaches of human interactions from an artistic perspective and thus sets specific accents for the perception of art. The temporal horizon of the presentation extends from the immediate present back to portrait painting at the beginning of the 20th century, to the portrait ‘Kommerzienrat Philipp Freudenberg’ by Max Slevogt from 1904.

With works by Klaus vom Bruch, Rineke Dijkstra, Vivian Greven, Thomas Locher, Josephine Meckseper, Elizabeth Peyton, Tobias Rehberger and Anike Joyce Sadiq, among others, the show, curated by Barbara Thomann and Dr Marie-Luise Zielonka, curators of the LBBW Collection, also conveys different media aspects and thematic focuses in the artistic reflection on interpersonal perception and experience. While Thomas Locher's installation works, for example, present language and communication as an essential component of relationships, Anike Joyce Sadiq's shadow projection ‘This is You Is Me’, on the other hand, conveys the experience of a silent contact between ‘I’ and ‘You’. Here, viewers are confronted with an animated ‘you’ that touches their shadows and thus provokes a very special experience of self-perception and perception of others.

With the overwhelming use of social media, the quality of interpersonal relationships has profoundly changed the way we experience life today. The network of physical relationships has expanded to include the digital space and newly defines the opportunities and limits of human encounters, between an ‘I’ and a ‘you’. Vivian Greven's painting ultimately leads over into the digital, dematerialised, yet still longed-for worlds of erotically charged bodies. Like the idealised physique of ancient marble sculptures, Greven gracefully stages corporeality in a sensual way, creating the illusion of eternal desire. Yet, the promise in Greven's pictures is at the same time a failure in the face of the impossibility of living human relationships as a perfect present.

Illustration above: Vivian Greven: IX, 2022. ©Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, und die Künstlerin

Book presentation and talk

On the occasion of the new publication 'Kommerzienrat Philipp Freudenberg. Nachforschungen zu einem wiederentdeckten Werk von Max Slevogt', edited by Lutz Casper, former head of the LBBW collection, there will be a book presentation in a talk with Lutz Casper on Saturday, 22 February 2025 at 4pm in the Forum of Messehalle 3.