Sculpture Park Neustadt, 16/10 - 24/10/2021

About the emergence of new/old spaces and their processuality


Art in public space opens up new contexts. It makes us perceive already known or long forgotten places differently and encounter them anew. However, it is not only the artistic works, with their respective negotiations and integrity, that give us new ideas. Rather, it is the experience of thematic confrontations that are inevitably read differently in the context of publicly accessible places. Here, other laws prevail with regard to the reception and interpretation of content.

In the context of Skulpturenpark Neustadt, 15 artistic positions, assembled by four local project spaces, temporarily move into a place that is in some ways a testament to the social and economic urban development of Leipzig‘s east. Similar to the origins of many „off-spaces“ - which are mainly at home in formerly vacant storefronts and retail spaces in the area - the history of the garden is one shaped by local, geopolitical and economic factors: after the wasteland was created by a demolition around 1990, the first discussions with citizens initiatives took place in the 2000s until finally a citizens garden was inaugurated in 2005.

This place is based on the needs of the citizens of the neighborhood. It has been claimed and (re-)activated. Now the garden is once again transformed from silent observer to actor. As host and setting, it decisively determines through its circumstances how this presentation of sculptural works can unfold and fit into its history. A history that far exceeds this exhibition, this gathering of the local independent scene. And yet, through various mechanisms of appropriation, the sculpture garden also inevitably joins the course of development of this place.

Detached from complicated, intellectualized white walls, neon lights, and glass fronts, visitors walk through wildly growing greenery, repurposed hills, and reclaimed landscapes. They walk past a variety of plants, discarded handkerchiefs, used condoms, through the bushes where people pee, along a house wall full of graffiti to a fireplace. A path through the park currently also leads past the various artistic works.

Fifteen artists are showing works here, some of which were conceived especially for the exhibition and which take up their surroundings and the special character of the venue. Encounter is a word that seems to be of special importance especially in connection with the exhibition location given here. Thus not only the Leipzig East or the Bürger:innengarten is an encounter zone. The project spaces also encounter each other with this shoulder-to-shoulder relationship at eye level. Above all, however, it is an encounter of diverse sculptural practices and their interpretations of a contemporary concept of sculpture. Objects are (re)contextualized in this publicly accessible park and gazes are redirected. Guided in new directions, observations and reflections are combined into conceptualizations around places in motion. Not under a roof but in the open air, a show of works can be found here that opens up new, old spaces.

Skulpturenpark Neustadt is a joint initiative of Bistro21, Fonda, Kunstraum IDEAL, and Kunsthalle.Ost with the kind support of Neustädter Markt e.V.

text Julius Pristauz


artist: Christian Bär, Morten Bjerre, Max Brück, Philipp Farra, Evgenij Gottfried, Lara Hampe, Kaupo Holmberg, Rafael Jörger, Tobi Keck, Nora Jil Helga Langen, Olga Monina, Lea Schürmann, Manuel Schneidewind, Mathias Weinfurther, Hannes Uhlenhaut

mir würde dann jetzt besser passen, 23/4 - 09/05/2021

artists: Maximilian Sandfort, Lukas Vau, Carlotta Lösch-Will, Till Hunger

mir würde dann jetzt besser passen, 2021, Maximilian Sandfort, Lukas Vau, Carlotta Lösch-Will, Till Hunger
mir würde dann jetzt besser passen, 2021, Maximilian Sandfort, Lukas Vau, Carlotta Lösch-Will, Till Hunger