2021 review
Dear friends,
We are eagerly awaiting the year 2022 and will soon be providing the first glimpses of our diverse programme of projects, exhibitions and events. First, however, we would like to review the turbulent year that is coming to an end. With the ongoing pandemic, we all have faced great challenges. Fortunately, we were able to realise many great projects. So here is our pictorial review of the year 2021!
In order to bring art to the people even in times of lockdowns, the Dortmunder Kunstverein and Urbane Künste Ruhr jointly initiated the exhibition Taking my Thoughts for a Walk along Dortmund's Kampstraße in February. 14 artistic works could thus be experienced and discovered during a walk in three weeks, in compliance with the Corona protection measures.
The coming weeks before the planned opening of the Ruhr Ding: Klima were particularly nerve-wracking. The hope of being able to open the exhibition on 8 May in a newly designed form - in 2020 it had already had to be postponed to 2021 because of the COVID pandemic - was unfortunately not fulfilled. Only falling incidences led to a gradual opening and a fantastic response from our visitors, which more than compensated for all the hoping and worrying. By the way, the sixth issue of our magazine, fresh off the press, is dedicated to the documentation of the Ruhr Ding: Klima. Order your own copy free of charge here.
As a contribution to the Ruhrtriennale 2021, we were then able to realise the large-scale installation Absorption by Asad Raza. For this, the entire ground floor of the Allbauhaus in Essen, a listed building from 1927/28 with a varied history of use, was filled with earth. There was no waste in this work; instead, organic and inorganic material was processed on site and composted into new soil. We met both the artist and the "Cultivators", who were responsible for processing the soil over a period of six weeks, for a discussion in the Allbauhaus and the Botanical Garden of the City of Bochum.
At this point, the Emscherkunstweg should not go unmentioned, to which two more works were added this year. The permanent sculpture trail along the Emscher is a long-term cooperative project implemented together with the Emschergenossenschaft and the Regionalverband Ruhr. After more than two years of research and planning, 23 sculptures modelled on buildings that have been demolished in the Ruhr region since the turn of the millennium have been forming Julius von Bismarck and Marta Dyachenko's Neustadt at the Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord since April.
Then, at the end of November, we were able to open the 20th work along the Emscher: Public Hybrid, a sculpture group made of sandstone and recycled plastic from the 3D printer, transforms an unspectacular landscape in Dortmund-Schüren into a hybrid formation that is as beautiful as it is dense in content. With this work, artist David Jablonowski not only addresses the high-tech Emscher conversion, but also the history of raw material extraction in the entire Ruhr region.