Karoline Bröckel

May 30, 2015 – July 11, 2015

Karoline Bröckel presents in her works a sensuous reception of nature. Not the visual copy of it, but the perceived moment. How do you get the trembling and flickering of birch leaves on a sheet of paper? How do I draw a rain down? Can I draw wind? Karoline Bröckel does it! Her meticulous recordings of wind and weather, of ant movements and football games, and even of concerts are just like diaries of dynamics. Nature means motion. And Karoline Bröckel gets it down on paper.

To draw means to look carefully. The first human Stone Age cave paintings depicted hunting and cult scenes. It was about capturing the real and imagined world by drawing simple strokes on the walls – a sort of orientation guide to help understand how life was perceived. The first philosophers weren’t precise observers of nature for nothing. They were thoroughly monitoring nature before they stated their condensed formulas. Heraclitus’ panta rhei – everything flows (or, everything flows down, nothing remains) unavoidably emerges from Bröckel’s drawings.

Motion sequences are the centre point of Bröckel’s sightings of nature. Just like the swaying of the birch branches and leaves that become the starting point of a new drawing. When the wind is strolling through the leaves Bröckel visually focuses on the movement and lets the pencil flow accurately over the paper. She intuitively brings motion onto the paper in a concentrative yet relaxed way by simultaneously letting go and holding on. In this way, she creates a number of wind, rain and snow drawings which she titles, dates, numbers and finally chronologically archives.

These sightings of nature are consequently expanded to the recording of concerts and even soccer games. Bröckel captures single sequences of the games with a two-colored pencil and archives them in a hardback diary. Entire world championships are neatly registered and their movements recorded.

Looking at the drawings one might think of the Little Prince saying, ‘What is essential is invisible to the eye’. Maybe, except for Bröckel.

Karoline Bröckel lives and works near Munich. Her works are part of important German museum collections, such as the Deutscher Bundestag Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, Museum Kunst Palast Düsseldorf, Museum Folkwang Essen, Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern and Staatliche Grafische Sammlung München. Most recently her works were presented in the opening exhibition of the Drawing Center Diepenheim in the Netherlands.

Exhibition

May 30 – July 11, 2015

Opening reception:
Saturday, May 30, 2015, 3–8 pm

3 pm
Opening reception

4 pm
Welcome address
Traditional sausages by butcher Ackermann
Traditional buns by bakery Bisegger

6 pm
Exhibition tour

Sunday, May 31, 2015, 11 am–4 pm

Long weekend:
Saturday, July 4, 2015, 11 am–9 pm
Sunday, July 5, 2015, 11 am–4 pm

Opening hours:
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 2–6 pm
Saturday 11 am–4 pm
and by appointment