"Never are my works only beautiful or only cruel or admonishing, rather they often have aspects of both of these sides," says Katharina Kühne. "They try to entice and enchant and, moreover, to point to grievances regarding many people's perspective on their environment and their own actions." In her works, the artist deals with themes and motifs such as connectedness, plant structures, interconnectedness, underwater worlds or symbols of protection, healing, wholeness and growth. Often it is personal experiences from travels or observations on hikes that inspire her artistic work. Cellular structures, skeletons, organs as well as landscapes appear in her works sometimes clearly, sometimes strongly alienated or mixed together.
"Your journey in your artistic career is tremendous and shows the enthusiasm and diversity of what you do," KWS board member Eva Kienle said in welcoming remarks at the opening. "You deal with organic forms that the eye can often only perceive under a microscope; here, of course, you also encounter the perspective of science. All this, the microcosm and the macrocosm, you want to interpret in your art and fascinate as well as inspire us viewers," Kienle said about artist Kathrina Kühne. "It’s very impressive what ideas you have."
Art brings people and society together for discourse, Alexander Leinemann, art historian from Göttingen, was pleased with the works on display. Whereby it remains a consistently conditional venture to deal with art taking place here and now. He underlined the claim of the artist, who is fascinated by complex systems. "More exists than humans, as highly evolved beings, are capable of thinking," Leinemann said. "There is always something we can't think." She said Katharina Kühne's works give visitors something to think about, leading them to see complex systems not as too difficult, but as an offer to engage with more than simple black-and-white thinking. "Art doesn't give us the answer right away; it will always remind us that we have to be willing to think in new and broader ways, and to recognize how limited we sometimes are in our thinking and in our approaches to solving problems as a result," Leinemann said.
Large paper sculptures and paintings on canvas dominate the first room. Shades of red and orange give the room a warm, almost summery and Mediterranean atmosphere. In the second room Katharina Kühne presents ceramic sculptures on pedestals. Small mirrored walls fixed directly behind the sculpture can confuse the viewer, but also raise awareness of different perspective possibilities. In the back section of the room, the artist shows a series of twelve works strictly hung in a row. Here she combines curved forms, as they occur in nature as plant forms in leaves, flowers, branches or shrubs, with human forms. Katharina Kühne keeps the colorfulness here for the form and figure rather covered and uses gray, white and silver tones. In the workshop room of the NEWCOMER KWS Art Lounge, visitors will find not only painterly wall works in various formats, but also a sculpture made of paper as well as ceramics. A view from the workshop window in the opposite first room of NEWCOMER allows the paper sculptures to communicate with each other. The showcases in the passageway enrich the view of NEWCOMER visitors through transparent window pictures, but also at the same time the view of passers-by of the passageway.
Katharina Kühne, born in 1992 in Lüneburg, studied fine arts at the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig from 2015. With Björn Dahlem, she first completed the basic sculpture apprenticeship and then studied painting with Wolfgang Ellenrieder, whose master student she became in 2021. In 2019, she started presenting her work initially in group exhibitions, becoming the winner of the design competition of the Markthalle Wolfsburg and receiving the Deutschlandstipendium through the Kunststiftung Kunze. Solo exhibitions follow as well as a catalog scholarship from Hannover Rück and Kickstarter graduate funding from the art fund "Neustart Kultur".
On Saturday, June 10, Katharina Kühne will be at the exhibition on the occasion of the Fachwerk Kultur Sommer in Einbeck from 12 to 6 p.m. Visitors are cordially invited to talk to the artist on site.
