After a short summer break, the Schloss Neuhardenberg Foundation resumes its programme in September with concerts, great literature, exhibitions and a panel discussion.
Image above: © Stiftung Schloss Neuhardenberg Foto: Fotokraftwerk
The composer, bandleader and bassist Avishai Cohen, an important representative of international jazz, will be coming to the Schinkelkirche with his trio on 8 September, creating worlds of sound full of complexity with his elegant and imaginative compositions.
With the musical reading Leise, laut, verboten on 22 September, the actors Annett Renneberg and Florian Lukas, accompanied by Günter Baby Sommer on drums, remember the suppressed and oppressed writers in the GDR.
Bertolt Brecht – Das Chaos ist aufgebraucht is the title of the new programme with songs by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau and texts by Bertolt Brecht, which will be premiered in Neuhardenberg on 28 September. The celebrated actress and singer Katharine Mehrling, together with actor Tilmar Kuhn and pianist Adam Benzwi, will transport the audience to Berlin in the 1920s.
Also on 28 September, the Summer Workshop for Photography, which was launched this year together with the Michael Schmidt Foundation for Photography and Media Art / Archive and the Joachim Herz Foundation, invites you to a discussion workshop entitled Klimax Klima. Teachers and students from the art academies in Munich, Hamburg and Leipzig will present their examination of climate change in art practice and discuss it with visitors.
On 6 October, the historian and co-founder of the human rights organisation ‘Memorial’, which was banned by the Russian government, Irina Scherbakowa and the political scientist and professor emeritus at Humboldt University Herfried Münkler will be looking for answers in the panel discussion ‘World at a crossroads. The end of the peace order?’ with rbb24-Inforadio editor Harald Asel attempt to orientate themselves in a dramatically changed world. The discussion will focus on the state of democracy in Germany and thus trust in the rule of law, the scope for broad and free expression of opinion and the individual’s commitment to society.
The solo exhibition Sylvia Hagen. Traces: Bronze – Clay – Paper can be seen in the exhibition hall until 22 December. Sculptures and works on paper from five decades offer a comprehensive insight into the multi-layered work of Brandenburg artist Sylvia Hagen, whose focus is always on the human body between calm self-reflection and inner turmoil.
The human being is at the centre of the work of artist Sylvia Hagen,
whose works the Schloss Neuhardenberg Foundation is now showing in a comprehensive retrospective. In her studio in Altlangsow, on the edge of Germany and with a view of the expanse of the Oderbruch, Sylvia Hagen captures the essence of man, his body and his psyche in expressive sculptures and drawings. The artist, who sees herself primarily as a sculptor, initially worked in stone for many years before turning to clay in the early 1990s.
The clay sculptures also form the starting point for her bronzes.
By initially building up forms from clay slabs in an architectural process, which she continues to work on, she approaches her figures over weeks, months and sometimes years.
This working practice is more akin to a search than a resolute artistic approach. In her nude drawings in charcoal and her gouaches, too, bodies are formed from searching strokes. Her works make the constant change visible and she succeeds in capturing the genuinely human in all its contradictions more sharply than some photographs are able to do.
Sylvia Hagen belongs to a generation of East German artists in which women in particular did not receive the attention their outstanding work deserved for a long time after reunification. This has now changed, and the Neuhardenberg Castle Foundation’s retrospective allows visitors to experience the unique work of a highly recognised artist. The exhibition is not organised chronologically, but according to the materials bronze – clay – paper.
This reveals Hagen’s special approach to these working materials: the raw material does not conceal the creative process, the sculptures and drawings are a revelation of her creative process.
Nothing is glossed over, nothing smoothed over. The material is allowed to work, to oxidise. Time leaves its traces on the surfaces and thus becomes part of the artwork. Hagen builds up her bodies, destroys them again and starts anew.
Her constant search for and approach to form is a dance on the fine line between figuration and abstraction.
Hagen was born in Treuenbrietzen in 1947. She began studying medicine and switched to sculpture at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee in 1971. From 1980, she lived with the sculptor Werner Stötzer (1931-2010) in Altlangsow in Oderbruch. Her works are represented in numerous collections. In 2006 and 2017, she won the Brandenburg Art Prize in the sculpture category, and in 2022 she received the Prime Minister’s Lifetime Achievement Honour Award.
Since 20 July 2024, Hagen’s work Gegen den Strom has been on permanent display in Neuhardenberg Castle Park as a memorial to Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg and the German resistance of 20 July 1944.
A collection of texts on Sylvia Hagen’s work will be published to accompany the exhibition
WHEN + WHERE?
Sunday, 08 September
Avishai Cohen Trio
concert
Schinkel Church, 7 pm
Sunday, 22 September
Quiet, loud, forbidden
Forbidden literature in the GDR read by Annett Renneberg and Florian Lukas on percussion: Günter Baby Sommer
Musical reading
Schinkel Church, 5 pm
Saturday, 28 September
Summer workshop for photography 2024
Klimax Klima
Open workshop. A dialogue.
Large hall, 12 noon
Bertolt Brecht – The chaos is used up
A Brecht evening with songs by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau
with Katharine Mehrling and Tilmar Kuhn
on the piano: Adam Benzwí Concert
Schinkel Church, 7 pm
Sunday, 06 October
Welt am Scheideweg
Das Ende der Friedensordnung?
with Irina Scherbakowa and Herfried Münkler
Moderation: Harald Asel
Discussion
Large hall, 4 pm
Sylvia Hagen
Traces
Bronze – Clay – Paper
25 August – 22 December
Exhibition hall Opening: 25 August, 3 pm
Exhibition tours with Sylvia Hagen:
Saturday, 28 September, 4 p.m.
Saturday, 12 October, 4 p.m.
Saturday, 23 October, 3 p.m.
Saturday, 7 December, 4 p.m.
Schloss in Deutschland
Schinkelplatz, 15320 Neuhardenberg
Schinkel Church
Karl-Marx-Allee 26, 15320 Neuhardenberg
