„I would also like to extend a warm welcome and express my gratitude for the introductory remarks and the invitation. It has enabled me to visit this place for the first time today, and I am very pleased about that. Some of you are already more familiar with this place than I am, but I had the pleasu…“

„I would also like to extend a warm welcome and express my gratitude for the introductory remarks and the invitation. It has enabled me to visit this place for the first time today, and I am very pleased about that. Some of you are already more familiar with this place than I am, but I had the pleasure of getting to know Joanna Schulte and her work in advance. The forest calls – and yet, even in the silence of nature, one is not immune to civilization. This was the essence of the exhibition announcement. For me, the central theme of Schulte's exhibition is not the forest itself, but rather the complex interrelationships between forest and civilization, the transitions from urban spaces to the periphery and then into nature. To outline it in a few contrasts: the forest as a retreat for hikers meets the harsh reality of abandoned houses, forest atmosphere meets gray carpet, wanderers meet nobodies, ceramic objects inspired by organic forms meet traces of graffiti. Art and nature are presented as a relational field—interwoven and interlocked. The result is a dense narrative, meaning that there are many paths to follow in this exhibition, but one must be careful not to get lost, because Joanna Schulte's oeuvre is impressively diverse and branches off in different directions. With this speech, I would like to offer you a few paths through and approaches to her work. I would like to briefly introduce Joanna Schulte: She was born in Osnabrück, where she studied art and history. She continued her art studies at Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where she was a master student. In recent decades, she has participated in numerous exhibitions, including at the Städtische Galerie Kubus in Hanover, the Kunsthaus Dortmund, the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, and the Kunstvereine Nürtingen and Wolfenbüttel, to name just a few of the many venues. In two weeks, an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven entitled All good things are wild and free... Wandern, pilgern, Spuren finden (All good things are wild and free... Wandering, pilgrimaging, finding traces) will open with Schultes' contribution. Scholarships have taken her to Schöppingen and St. Georgen, Wiepersdorf and Worpswede, Röderhof and Prösitz, often to places that are somewhat remote, close to nature. Most recently, she was in Rostock, as evidenced by several letters that can be seen here in the exhibition. Once you get to know her and her work a little better, you quickly realize what else sets this artist apart: energy and perseverance, enthusiasm, and (dark) humor—qualities that, for me, form the basis of her multifaceted oeuvre. Schulte uses film, sound, and knitting dolls, creates room-filling installations, and has developed her own unique form of mail art. She constantly experiments with new materials and forms of expression—she creates collages, glazed ceramics, and incorporates various found objects into her artistic cosmos. There are series, such as the self-portrait series Rot und Wald (Red and Forest), which she has been working on continuously since 2015, and works that she develops in the places where she is invited. In this way, her work is not static, because new aspects and things are constantly being integrated into her cosmos, prompting her to try something new or transform something existing. During our preliminary discussion in her studio in Hanover, we spent quite some time discussing what else I could say about her. Can I mention that she is a mother? Not because the topic comes up in her work, but because Joanna Schulte belongs to a generation of female artists who were trained with the doctrine: children or art. She dared to do the “impossible” and managed to reconcile both. I find that courageous and it testifies to her unconditional desire to make art. For me, that makes her a role model. She is also a role model for me in terms of sustainability. Schulte has made recycling and reusing existing materials her working method. She incorporates old wallpaper and used carpets into her artworks, or includes found objects such as a rustic wooden bench and a hiking sign. Working with such objets trouvés or ready-mades is always a risk: How original is it? What makes these everyday objects art? But also: How are they valued? From there, it's only a small step to the question of how art is valued in general. I find it productive to provoke these questions alone. Schulte not only questions capitalist logic, she is also interested in other forms of resistance, such as the spatial appropriation strategies of graffiti artists. These graffiti reminiscences appear several times in this exhibition: for example, she uses wallpaper with graffiti traces that she found in demolished buildings in Prösitz, Saxony, in her collages. And the floor installation, which she cut out of a carpet, also features traces of graffiti. The title Come Rain or Shine translates as “Whatever may happen” – an expression of a certain serenity or casualness. It's a motto that suits the artist well: don't put anything at the center, but rather fragment the staging. Don't put forward a bold thesis, but rather juxtapose several narrative threads. Let things happen instead of forcing them. Trust in chance. Focus on the incidental and the everyday, which, when placed in a different context, can trigger astonishment. Incidentally, the carpet is also a recycled object: it comes from a former Kaufhof building in Hanover, where a Banksy exhibition was held. Schulte was able to take the carpet that was laid for the exhibition and reuse it. Whether the marks are from the Banksy exhibition or from the artist herself remains unclear. Schulte accepts that her exhibitions sometimes look a little trashy. She likes beauty and minimalism (as evidenced by the two works “Nicht Nichts” [Not Nothing]) – but she also likes the abysmal and the outdated. That's a good cue to talk about the first day covers, of which Schulte has already sent out over 1,500. First day covers? If you're hearing this term for the first time, let me briefly explain what they are and how Schulte became aware of them. In 2012, while on a scholarship at the Prösitz artists' colony in Saxony, she found a folder of first day covers from the GDR in a building scheduled for demolition. The name derives from the fact that the stamps used on them were used and stamped for the first time. As you can imagine, the stamps are true rarities, yet they can be purchased very cheaply, which Schulte has been doing ever since, addressing the letters to an ominous “Oliver” and sending them off. However, since the address is missing, the letters are returned to sender, which Schulte uses to send letters to the Westwendischer Kunstverein, among others. She does not do this alone, however: in order to internationalize her stamp collection, she gives letters to friends who are traveling abroad, so that her collection also includes letters from China, Italy, and various other countries. They are gathered in a scrapbook in the exhibition, which you can view while sitting on the wooden bench. You notice that a circular economy is at work here: letters are sent around the world and returned to the senders; objects and spatial elements migrate from exhibition to exhibition and become part of a Schulte cosmos that is constantly being reimagined. The forest and hiking recur as often as the encroachment of civilization on “untouched” nature and the manifold interactions between the two, which make it clear that one cannot exist without the other. Schulte finds images for this that are as bizarre as they are memorable: birdsong that appropriates the beeping of electric scooters; knitting pinworms winding their way through the leaves; life-size 3D replicas of animals (in this case a titmouse) used by archers as practice dummies and equipped with a kill zone. Schulte's self-portrait in a deforested landscape in the series Rot und Wald (Red and Forest) is also haunting. Schulte brings together the traces and works mentioned here in a multimedia production. She uses the entire space for this, incorporating the floor as well as the outdoor area. By appealing to different senses, she creates an atmospheric mood. In this way, she not only depicts the forest, but brings it into the exhibition space, where it can be heard and smelled. In fact, I hope that you will succeed in not losing sight of the forest for the trees. What also distinguishes her work is the eye-level at which she encounters visitors. Viewers do not take on a passive role, but can walk (hike!) through the exhibition and work their way through it, for example by collecting a stamp in the stamp house, in keeping with the hiking tradition. What I would like to encourage you to do when viewing the exhibition: take a close look at the stamps and postmarks. And pay attention to the titles. Schulte not only collects curiosities (who has ever heard of Mobyletten or Paximaten, which unfortunately are not on display in this exhibition, but still need to be mentioned briefly because they are such great words), she also has her own experimental and playful approach to language, as evidenced by the wordplay in her collages and her German-English title combinations. For example, “Gift of the Gap” – loosely translated as “Das Geschenk der Lücke” – sounds somewhat poisonous to German ears. The saying “Gift oft he Gab” (with a b at the end) is an expression for “talkativeness.” And that's a good cue to slowly come to the end. Before you see for yourself, I would like to draw your attention to the hot-off-the-press publication “Eben nur fast – come rain or shine,” which features many of the works on display in the KunstKammer, accompanied by explanatory texts. It is available here and can be purchased along with the edition of first-day covers created for the exhibition. Now I wish you much joy in discovering the four exhibitions. This place is a fine example of how the most remote locations, where the dog is buried, can unleash creative energies, promote collective thinking, and stimulate self-organization. Enjoy viewing! “

Gift of the gap, Westwendischer Kunstverein Gartow, Anna-Lena Wenzel, 2025

„Things Intermingle “What do you do when your world starts to fall apart? I go for a walk, and if I’m really lucky, I find mushrooms.” Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, opening words of the prologue to “The Mushroom at the End of the World” (2018) Nothing is as it seems. It smells like the woods and a bit…“

„Things Intermingle “What do you do when your world starts to fall apart? I go for a walk, and if I’m really lucky, I find mushrooms.” Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, opening words of the prologue to “The Mushroom at the End of the World” (2018) Nothing is as it seems. It smells like the woods and a bit like paint. (The graffiti spray mist should have long since vaporized, or is the carpet emitting the smell?) Withered leaves and small cones lie scattered on the floor. A film shows a screen of fog. Three quarters of the walk over the path made of wooden blanks lead past stamp stations with a guardian saint. A shot of liquor is also served. A historic-seeming walking-tour culture alongside graffiti, which reflects more of an urban atmosphere but can also be found in lost places, such as abandoned hotels deep in the Harz Mountains, which in many places reflects a post-apocalyptic landscape. In the installation “We’ve got to get in to get out und Außen ist das Gegenteil von Innen” they cover, on remnants of carpet, large sections of the floor and decorate a wooden panel located in parking areas that normally displays information about footpaths. Further objets trouvés from the woods are a traffic sign with stylized hikers or the life-size three-dimensional replica of a wounded deer. Next to these are things, which clearly do not come from the woods, are artificial branches; small, glistening knitted worms that slither over the carpet; partially concealed monitors that show films featuring mysteriously swirling, murky fluids. Added to this are two benches that provide an opportunity to pause, observe, and listen. One hears cheeps and chirps from time to time, which closes a circle that is not one: this sound work is inspired by songbirds that use their calls to imitate the sounds made by electric scooters. Joanna Schulte does not simply shift walking inside. She brings the outside inside and allows it to pervade: “We‘ve got to get in to get out.” When walking we look at what we refer to as nature in our dualistic worldview and what has long since been reshaped by industrially manufactured sounds, structures, and economic systems. This installation is a place of reflection where looking at what is outside and inside intermingles. And things intermingle as well: nature and the anthropogenic. With respect to our era, in her book “The Mushroom at the End of the World” (2018) anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing writes about the Anthropocene. She scrutinizes capitalism and its ecological consequences by exploring the socio-economic network that has developed around the gathering and handling of the matsutake mushroom. In Japan it is considered a delicacy; it was the first living entity to rise out of the ruins of Hiroshima. The online platform Tsing cofounded, www.feralatlas.org, assembles research on “wild” ecologies that develop when non-human entities intermingle with human infrastructures. Ecologies that disseminate outside of human control, such as large occurrences of valuable matsutake mushrooms on depleted soil, invasive species in the outback, birds that learn new calls, or wild herbs that grow among ruins: researchers do not rate these phenomena as something that has to be contained but to be brought together and observed for learning purposes. This is in fact a different attitude towards nature, which we have previously ordinarily thought of as a malleable vis-à-vis in our dualistic worldview. This observant and, in the best case, learning attitude towards nature is one of the key aspects of Joanna Schulte’s work. Urban images, products, and behaviors intermingle with those from the woods and nature. For her it is about the careful observation of ourselves and the world in the Anthropocene—and about the prudent joggling of our certainties about the world. Her installation is a space of experience that develops a wonderfully fragile poetry and invites us let our thoughts wander while walking down the footpath, or to leave the path in order to take pause in this world full of contradictions and yet where many things nevertheless join together—among the ruins that we leave behind everywhere. “

Die Dinge vermischen sich , Anne Prenzler, 2024

„Review: Joanna Schulte - Outside is the opposite of inside - Städtische Galerie KUBUS To get to Joanna Schulte's exhibition, we have to climb up to it. At the beginning of our hike, we are greeted by a peacefully crouching deer. Then the ascent begins via a partially deconstructed staircase into t…“

„Review: Joanna Schulte - Outside is the opposite of inside - Städtische Galerie KUBUS To get to Joanna Schulte's exhibition, we have to climb up to it. At the beginning of our hike, we are greeted by a peacefully crouching deer. Then the ascent begins via a partially deconstructed staircase into the exhibition space. Here we find a stamp house and a path that will now guide us. Sounds and scents complement the simulation of a hiking situation. We encounter an artistically designed wooden path in an exemplary “white cube.” This is the exhibition view we find. We can now enter the wooden path, linger on the benches, and listen to the sounds. What we cannot do is enjoy the view, because it ends at the white walls of the “cube”/KUBUS. We are not outside, we are inside. When we say “inside,” don't we assume that we are usually in artificially created architectural structures, such as the KUBUS? And when we say “outside,” don't we think of the wild nature we love to spend time in? Why is that? Nietzsche once answered this question with the sentence: We love nature because it does not judge us. In the city, we are constantly being judged: What is he/she wearing, where does she come from, what does she look like... etc. Nature gives us room to breathe, it gives us space for silence. Communication takes place on a different level here. But nature does not want to communicate with us, because: The cruel thing about nature is that it is not interested in us – not even Nietzsche, the wandering thinker par excellence. We need nature, but it does not need us – cultivated as a source of food or as a recreational space, for example for hiking. Which brings us back to the exhibition, which explores this idea aesthetically. The wooden planks and benches have now become art because they are “inside” the “white cube.” Outside, they would be merely useful objects that have to fit into nature in the most sensible way possible and guide hikers or allow them to take a break. In art, the difference between inside and outside is taken to the extreme. Ultimately, it determines the essence of things and how they are perceived. If you engage with the exhibition, it opens up multi-layered possibilities for reception that can lead you to surprising and impressive places, just like on a good hike. The quality of the exhibition lies precisely here, in the ideas that transcend the outside and the inside. “

We‘ve got to get in to get out und Außen ist das Gegenteil von Innen, Dr. H. H. Paulsen, 2024

„"The Art of Gentle Melancholy" They all invoke this voice. Vladimir Nabokov calls out “speak, memory” to us and to himself, Marcel Proust betakes himself “in search of lost time,” Joseph von Eichendorff whispers to us that there “sleeps a song in every thing.” A single sound, a word, a smell, or …“

„"The Art of Gentle Melancholy" They all invoke this voice. Vladimir Nabokov calls out “speak, memory” to us and to himself, Marcel Proust betakes himself “in search of lost time,” Joseph von Eichendorff whispers to us that there “sleeps a song in every thing.” A single sound, a word, a smell, or a specific taste arouses associations—and sunken images well up in us. These images are removed from the sediments of our memory and spawn even more, until the moment is reassembled and the image is complete. We have our own experience of dealing with our memories; we even invent our own rituals for doing it, which become more and more refined the older we become and the more often we think back. Art is the communication of subjectivity, which is objectified by the path that making art has to strike in order to become a message. It involves constructing things—regardless of whether by means of painting or an installation—in such a way that they complement one another and increasingly consolidate until an atmosphere is communicated that was not there before yet somehow lay dormant in these things. It is their juxtaposition that sets them free. This is pretty much what Joanna Schulte’s message looks like. This is how she communicates. The purpose is to pull others into their own past and discover what is universally communicable. Even those who have not experienced this, or could not experience it in this way, should be able to participate in the “global language” of memory. The individual is universal to the extent that he or she can in general convey remembering with other individuals. Even if there are personal, non-transferrable images, one’s memory always has something like a communicable “storyboard.” The associated film is always a different one in each case. How is this feeling constituted, who or what is speaking? Joanna Schulte seeks to understand the endless loop of longing by way of accumulation. Repetition also belongs to the language of memory. A fragment of music or a performance alone in a red dress in a vast landscape, and the East German first day covers sent to Oliver testify to theise method of this continuously always-having- to- start- from- the- beginning of the same . A second level of the message arises almost inevitably as a result of the objects that have been used and presses itself upon us. Because these things are all very descriptive, they result in something like a documentation of the taste of the time. Those who are remembering, both the very young as well as the old, are thinking “That’s how it used to be in the old days; what times those were!” So one spontaneously thinks that it was once modern, current, or “all the rage.” This causes the work to experience this odd doubling between poetry and curiosity about the outdated and has meanwhile become quaint. The letters to Oliver are at the same time also a document of the postal present of the sunken GDR, further collaged and therefore completed by means of stickers and notations by today’s official postal service. Joanna Schulte is as interested in her contemporaries’ traces of the present as she is in sunken time. This includes graffiti on walls or signs in places that are off the beaten track as well as decay as the result of the ravages of time. The photographs speak the same language as the objets trouvés that have been preserved and reused in the arrangements. This is always accompanied by a special sort of pathos: the pain of parting blends with deference for what is apparently the least significant, releasing the poetry of the everyday and the commonplace. “Paximat” is the name of a projector for small picture slides; as the title of the installation presented at Hannover’s Marktkirche it obtains a special ring—in Latin pax also means peace. Dona nobis pacem, give us peace, an appeal often heard here. This works addresses camping as a ritualized temporary arrangement with the corresponding accessories, which is understood as freedom. Much the same as trekking near home. Well-developed paths with a view and stamp stations, familiar yet newly experienced every time. Added to this are curiosities such as the wooden animals, which were actually intended as targets for an archery trail and now serve as representatives of wildlife in the interior of the Städtische Galerie KUBUS. These are several of the allusions to various works by Joanna Schulte that are meant to exemplify the mental framework of the artist’s oeuvre and outline the conceptual horizon within which this very personal notion of art operates. “

Kunst der sanften Melancholie, Giso Westing, 2023

„“Invited into the Unforgotten” This octabin has passed its prime. As if someone had set it to one side and left it there unattended for quite some time. It looks like taggers have been busy tampering with the outer wall of the octagonal cardboard structure. In any case, they are covered with graffi…“

„“Invited into the Unforgotten” This octabin has passed its prime. As if someone had set it to one side and left it there unattended for quite some time. It looks like taggers have been busy tampering with the outer wall of the octagonal cardboard structure. In any case, they are covered with graffiti. On the inside a similar picture of ostensible negligence: an old, painted, stickered trash can displays notices by subcultural and political movements. The wallpaper is peeling off the walls, and written tags, like those in school toilet stalls, as well as stickers make the absence of those previously present painfully felt. The bottom of the trash can is missing and its contents are scattered over the floor. It testifies to past carousing— empty chips bags, bottle caps, empty beer bottles. However, a finely worked and framed collage hangs on the wall at the far right, next to the door, featuring the words “Zu Gast eingeladen—geladen in das Unvergessen—zu Gast” (Visitors invited—invited into the unforgotten—as visitors). The “unforgotten” to which the artist extends an invitation is retrieved from the depths of the past, which was never completely gone. The series of octabins is the first phase of Joanna Schulte’s work, which she developed in 1997 while she was still studying in Hannover: self-contained time capsules that look the same from the outside, but each of which allows immersing oneself in other worlds on the inside. Visitors can only enter the capsules one at time and are alone with their enjoyment of art. This intimacy, being thrown back on oneself in one’s examination of the artist’s sensual constructions, is lovely and uncanny at the same time, as the loneliness that lies in isolation first has to be endured. The simple cardboard octagons manufactured by the company Borealis are normally used to collect cable remnants. Joanna Schulte constructs carefully staged landscapes of private and public spaces for those who enter the octabins—the corner bar, the waiting area at a government agency, or even a getaway to a sandy beach. The formerly last octabin was an homage to lost love. Since then, Schulte has opened up the artificial worlds. In her installative works in the exhibition space, as if on a stage set, visitors move with and observe one another. What caused the artist to look back, and what did she find? This octabin is more abstract than the preceding one, as its subject lies in the relation between inside and outside, between yesteryear and the here and now, in the relation between nature and artificiality. It tells a story about reflection, which is at once a story about recycling. The objects with which Joanna Schulte constructs her installative settings are found, unearthed, and accidentally discovered carriers of time that the artist breathes new life into through their arrangement and by supplementing them. Poetic texts, sounds, videos, and plays of light induce an atmosphere that resonates as a feeling of nostalgia. The viewer’s supposed memory, which can be triggered by the recycled everyday objects, bring about the emotional access to the experience of the artificial arrangement. Recycling has therefore always been a part of Joanna Schulte’s artistic working process, yet in the new installation, which draws on her completed series, it possesses a more involved level: the lettering that was sprayed on the exterior of the time capsule reads “LOST NATURE”; another one reads “SPACE TRASH.” The trash that carelessly restricts the tight space of the octabin, takes up its floor, and whose owner cannot be located combines with the lettering to produce a work that addresses humankind’s littering of the earth. The UFO on the entrance door not only makes reference to the ludicrous idea of sending trash in closed containers into space but is similarly a reference to the only future that remains for humankind if it continues to handle the earth’s resources like it has in the past: isolated in closed spaces, thrown back on itself and its own past, it whirrs through nothingness. The look back is dystopian. However, the work also refers to looking ahead. Reflecting on the unforgotten enables reevaluating the past and transforming it into something new. “

Eingeladen in das Unvergessen, Paula Schwerdtfeger, 2022

„Michael Stockhausen: Text based on the opening speech on October 7, 2022 Supposedly absurd, Brühler Kunstverein A path is not a road, a road is not a footbridge, a footbridge is not a distance; a distance in the mathematical sense is not comparable to a road distance. In the mathematical sens…“

„Michael Stockhausen: Text based on the opening speech on October 7, 2022 Supposedly absurd, Brühler Kunstverein A path is not a road, a road is not a footbridge, a footbridge is not a distance; a distance in the mathematical sense is not comparable to a road distance. In the mathematical sense, a distance is known to be the shortest connection between two points—I believe that this type of distance is of little interest to the artist Joanna Schulte. She knows very well how to cover distances, especially long ones, both in hiking and in art. No one can dispute her endurance, considering her exhibitions in 2022 alone—eight in just 10 months. She dismantled her last solo exhibition less than 14 days ago and now, with sore muscles from building bridges, she is opening her “Vermeintlich abwegige” (Supposedly Absurd) exhibition at the Kunstverein Brühl. Then it's on to Copenhagen almost seamlessly. And it's not just the exhibition that opens today; her freshly printed artist's book Joanna Schulte: Zurück / Retour / Return is also celebrating its Brühl premiere on the occasion of the local exhibition. The new catalog—including a contribution by chairwoman Ms. Zimmermann—is looking forward to a book break on the “Jausen-Bank.” Inside, outside, merging But enough praise, let us consider Joanna Schulte's exhibition: A path is not a way, a way is not a footbridge, a footbridge is not a distance, and a distance in the mathematical sense is not comparable to a route. Anyone who calls their exhibition “Supposedly Absurd” is hardly interested in the shortest connection between two points. They love to plan the unplannable, to give themselves and us time. The intensity with which the artist has permeated the Brühl Art Association can be gauged from the word “ab-wegig” alone. The location of the old locksmith's shop is literally abwegig. Off the beaten track, behind the gate, the small park opens up. There is no direct route in the mathematical sense from the park gate to the Kunstverein, just a winding path with small streams and narrow footbridges that are difficult to find in the dark. Joanna Schulte also led me down “side paths” during the preview of the exhibition. The Kunstverein's statue of Mary was very important to her. “The Kunstverein's statue of Mary?” Anyone who is only looking for the shortest connection to art will probably never have noticed the “supposedly misguided” Mary to the right of the exhibition building. Have you? If you explore the exhibition carefully, you will discover another, smaller Madonna that Joanna Schulte brought with her to Brühl. In this way, the artist deliberately links the interior with the exterior, the art spaces with the living spaces, and also culture with nature. This is also the case in the large print on the front wall: The red dress in Königssee. However, does the culture lie in the red dress, or in our view of the landscape, cultivated by many works of art and photographs? Joanna Schulte's exhibition begins the moment they take a “detour,” that is, the moment they cross the park threshold toward the Kunstverein, strolling along the winding paths. And it continues “seamlessly” when they arrive at the entrance to the Alte Schlosserei. However, Schulte has not placed her footbridge seamlessly, i.e., flush with the door threshold or even beyond it. Joanne Schulte respectfully allows her footbridge to recede three steps. In doing so, she has once again responded to the architecture in a subtle way. The footbridge takes a back seat and shows consideration for the special entrance situation, as the “merging” of inside and outside was already marked here: the paving stones migrate into the interior of the art space and allow the wall with its many windows to become a membrane between inside and outside. The artist's spatial staging sensitively picks up on the existing interior-exterior dialogue in the Alte Schlosserei and engages with the architectural features of the location. No boundaries, just a flow into which the winding footbridge planks fit. “To Oliver” We don't want to climb the central footbridge just yet, but first lead you down other, “presumably misguided” paths. Because there is more than just the prominently placed floor work. You will see other narrow footbridges mounted on the wall, which span the length of the room. “Old” letters are neatly lined up here. In the “To Oliver” series, which has been growing for 10 years, Joanna Schulte has now sent over 1,000 GDR first-day covers on their travels. None of the letters “To Oliver” arrived, as the conspicuous stickers from Deutsche Post sometimes show. Joanna Schulte found first-day covers from the GDR, which were issued on special occasions and accompanied by special stamps, during an artist residency in Prösitz near Leipzig. On the one hand, she was interested in their visuality, but above all in their cultural-historical and cultural-political interstices. Who is this Oliver, to whom Joanna Schulte has been writing since 2012, yet who returns each letter with an Elvis-esque “Return to Sender”? Once again, we encounter this “convergence” of inside and outside: the more envelopes with their own unique stories I look at, the more I immerse myself in their contents. What might be inside the envelope, what might be written there? In this one and the countless other returned letters? The “shell” envelope makes the absent interior present. Perhaps this old question of “form and content,” body and soul, is what the series of works “To Oliver” contains? And isn't making art something like the evocative letter writing “To Oliver,” over and over and over again? Without knowing who or what that is, the “art,” without knowing whether anyone sees, hears, receives what you are sending? Knowing that you will usually get a “return to sender” and yet folding a new message into a new envelope and sending it on its way... In addition to these profound considerations, it is also simply a joy to look at these beautifully composed “containers”: stamps, postmarks, and notes form their own reference structure. A meaningful echo resounds between the dates. The letters lined up here are all addressed to the Brühl Art Association—and it is no coincidence that a Max Ernst adorns one or two of the items. Joanna Schulte has woven the Kunstverein into her “Oliver” project with these letters and has been preparing the exhibition since the jury meeting. What do the postal workers think about all this? After all, since 2012 they have been involuntarily involved in the artist's inscrutable project to reach Oliver. Are they excited, puzzled, or simply annoyed? Or have the first ones begun to write their own epistolary novel about the unattainable love between Joanna and Oliver? What puzzles art historians when considering such work is its classification: how should this series of letters be described in terms of art history? Is it mail art, a form of artistic exchange established primarily by Fluxus artists? Is it more of a cultural-historical project that unfolds between stamps, first-day covers, and collectible stamps? Is it an image-based approach? Ultimately, Schulte shows us another collaged image that uses, incorporates, and questions the visual worlds of our everyday culture. Or are we even dealing with institutional criticism here? Not only does the artist challenge the administrative structures of the postal service, but various art institutions in Germany are also included, subverted, and networked into the search for “Oliver.” It would be “supposedly absurd” to pigeonhole Schulte's persistent letter project, when it is precisely the detours and diversions that make “To Oliver” incomparable. Boardwalk A path is not a road, a road is not a footbridge, a footbridge is not a distance; a distance in the mathematical sense is not comparable to a road distance. What exactly is a footbridge? According to Grimm's dictionary, it is a “more or less elaborate wooden construction used for crossing or climbing.” That fits. Etymologically, “climbing over” and “staircase” are the roots of the word, bringing to mind a ditch or water. And this is also the case in the exhibition – not least because of the winding shape of the wooden planks and, of course, the large photograph at the head of the table. “As long as you are still on the footbridge, you should not mock the ditch,” goes an old saying. Climbing and crossing are accompanied by the danger of falling; there is no question about that. And even in the ‘catwalk’ – despite all the pride in the exposed position of “standing above” – there is also the fear of tripping or even falling in public. Artists know this exposed position all too well. Not least because art always takes place in public. It has to take place in public, because only in public can something that has been created at a given time be called art. Is the winding walkway a reflection of the artist's own journey? Or an image of the daily journey we all undertake? It is astonishing how strongly the term “boardwalk” seems to be linked to the materiality of wood. “A more or less elaborate wooden construction,” according to Grimm's dictionary. Is it because of the material? Not necessarily, because iron bridges are now also easy to imagine. What they have in common with wooden bridges is that they often have a certain precarious feel to them. This is especially true when you can see through them. Stone footbridges, however, are less likely to come to mind; stone stands for solidity. A footbridge has something temporary, something more provisional about it—perhaps that is its defining characteristic? “Where a footbridge is sufficient, no bridge is built,” says another proverb. The “wooden construction” footbridge arises from life, everyday needs, private initiatives, or small communities, sometimes spontaneously. It adapts to and responds to local conditions. The countless footbridges may not be found in all navigation devices, but they are firmly marked on the maps of human paths and lives in the local area. And so, in the past, those who knew not only all the bridges and paths, but above all the footbridges in a region, were particularly praised for their local knowledge. In this respect, it seems to me that Joanna Schulte uses the footbridge as an image in her art and for her art: true to life, locally rooted, flexible, open, and art as a never too secure affair between culture and nature, the world and humanity. Has a postal worker ever picked up the phone and called the sender? Sure, there are no phone numbers on the envelope, but the numbers for the Brühler Kunstverein or other institutions listed are easy to find. "Hello, Ms. Zimmermann, I'm looking for Joanna Schulte, who must work for you. She has written several letters to an Oliver, but always forgets the address." This phone call would have formed a bridge between the established institution of the postal service and the life and art of Joanna Schulte. And last but not least, the fact that someone is issuing a first-day cover from a state that no longer exists with a cleverly curated stamp program could have made you want to pick up the phone, couldn't it? I take three insights about art away from the exhibition: 1. Art is “supposedly absurd,” and that is its strength. 2. Art is “Oliver”: again, again, and again. 3. Art is a bridge. When art is presented or staged as permanent bridge architecture with a claim to eternity, one is entitled to be skeptical. Joanna Schulte questions and explores this state-cultural embedding of art and history in specific visual cultures—including first-day covers, picture postmarks, and stamps. What does a culture refer to? How are culture and nation created through images and made to seem “natural”? Images suddenly represent abstract concepts, e.g., something one describes, feels, or thinks of as “German,” “French,” “New Zealand,” “Indonesian,” “Russian,” “Indian,” and so on. This “second nature,” into which culture can solidify, has been critically questioned by, among others, the French philosopher Roland Barthes (“Myths of Everyday Life,” first published in 1957), and it seems to me that Joanna Schulte's art also seeks a critical distance from eternal values: be it in the red dress in the historically and culturally exaggerated sublime landscape of Königssee, be it in the image of the jetty, or in the image-scientific questioning of “An Oliver,” among others. Königssee is beautiful, the envelopes with all the selected stamps are worlds to immerse oneself in, and Max Ernst remains an exciting artist, whether in the neighboring museum or on a collector's stamp. But the eternal, the overly certain, the supposedly “natural” must be viewed with distance. On paths, you watch your step. On footbridges, you can never be too sure, as the possibility of falling is always in the back of your mind. I am grateful when, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a “more or less artistic wooden construction” unexpectedly leads me across a ditch to new paths; in nature as in art. “

Vermeintlich abwegig, Michael Stockhausen, 2022

„P.S. The letters to Oliver provide a wealth of references, interpretations, and value. As first day covers from the GDR, they are philatelic rarities, historical documents, and ready-mades wrapped into one. Intended for an ominous Oliver—but with no address. With the sender information c/o Joanna S…“

„P.S. The letters to Oliver provide a wealth of references, interpretations, and value. As first day covers from the GDR, they are philatelic rarities, historical documents, and ready-mades wrapped into one. Intended for an ominous Oliver—but with no address. With the sender information c/o Joanna Schulte, the complete address of the art collection of the Akademie der Künste [AdK], in part supplemented on the reverse side with “Attn.: Dr. habil. Rosa von der Schulenburg,” which in GDR times was on Maternstrasse (today Luisenstrasse). This undeliverable letter seems like a greeting from the East German past of the museum. In the same way the artist, undercover so to speak, puts herself in the care of the Kunstsammlung, she smuggles the first day cover letters into the museum after having applied a currently valid postage stamp. It guarantees not only the “as though” return of the letters. Schulte’s careful selection is aesthetically enriching and makes for the joy of discovery. The web of references is extended by the current postmark and by various return-to-sender and AdK receipt stamps. For art lovers these “works of letter art” are a sensory and ingenious pleasure, and semioticians will have a field day. “

P.S. , Dr. habil Rosa von der Schulenburg, 2022

„How Nice That It Was Nice, Schloss Landestrost Left behind are the disco balls, the record covers and booklets, even the furniture, on which time seems to have stuck – not as dust, but as a reminder of something that once was and is no longer. Through the dim twilight of the rooms, a sound can b…“

„How Nice That It Was Nice, Schloss Landestrost Left behind are the disco balls, the record covers and booklets, even the furniture, on which time seems to have stuck – not as dust, but as a reminder of something that once was and is no longer. Through the dim twilight of the rooms, a sound can be heard, a loop perhaps, a narrated text, or even just the humming of lamps. With their light, they cast images that pulsate inside the visitors: is this my memory or that of a third party? Joanna Schulte constructs interiors from found materials and reflective, projecting, and resonating devices. What may appear to be random is in fact a deliberate composition created specifically for Schloss Landestrost. The arrangement fits the exhibition spaces like a second skin. Within them, visitors can find a resonance chamber for their own experiences, thoughts, and memories and reflect these back onto what they encounter—a self-sustaining, meaning-generating cycle. The artist connects the accessible space with the inner world of the visitors. Nostalgia is the emotional ticket that opens up the inner world to the arranged space, its eeriness, depths, and historical ruptures. The difference between what has been experienced and the suggested memory of something that has not been experienced becomes painfully apparent. This pain is bittersweet. “

Schön, dass es schön war, Paula Schwerdtfeger, 2020

„How Nice That It Was Nice, Twice catalog text, Wir sind was wir waren, Hannover 2020 Not only do the titles of both exhibitions contain a tautology. The entire sound installation at the Raum für Freunde des Kunstverein Wolfsburg (Space for Friends of the Kunstverein Wolfsburg) and recently at S…“

„How Nice That It Was Nice, Twice catalog text, Wir sind was wir waren, Hannover 2020 Not only do the titles of both exhibitions contain a tautology. The entire sound installation at the Raum für Freunde des Kunstverein Wolfsburg (Space for Friends of the Kunstverein Wolfsburg) and recently at Schloss Landestrost are geared towards the motif of doubling. Two 1960s-style stereo consoles face one another in “Stereo Twice.” Frank Duvall’s hit single “Give Me Your Love” from the 1980s is rotating on the both of the turntables. However, the musical content is secondary, as both of the pickup arms have been manipulated in such a way that one and the same passage plays over and over again. What originates by analog means is what otherwise only occurs by mixing samples: an indefinite beat that produces a spatial effect through the use of two stereo sound sources. Depending on where visitors are in the space, an acoustic discoloration takes place: the two beats sometimes seem synchronous, and in the next instant they distance themselves from one another in terms of time and space, one to find themselves again. On the one hand, by using a loop the sound work makes reference to the repetition of one of the most elementary components of music, and at the same time to the impossibility of the perfect sameness of what is being repeated as such. Befitting the venue, the exhibition Schön, dass es schön war (Nice That It Was Nice) plays with a nostalgic reflex; it is generated by vivid, multimedia scenes that extend over the exhibition space. The installations comprise materials such as lamps and furniture from the 1960s and ’70s, disco balls, album covers, or slide viewers. Besides these collective memory factors that make reference to an everyday aesthetic from the past, another element often appears in Joanna Schulte’s works: a narrative one, often related to the artist herself. Moreover, a temporal aspect time and again plays a major role in the installations and lends them a stage character that completely dispenses with actors. Hence an old-fashioned ladies’ fur jacket left hanging on the coat rack reveals that there must have been a previous moment and that the coat’s owner has already left the scene. In addition, the coat rack and the small dresser quote a past epoch of living culture, examples for which are the cassette tape jam and a headrest from the 1970s. This overlapping is once again exponentiated in the moldy photograph: thus a double layer of time dwells within the analog photograph as a trace of the presence of an object per se. This manifests once more in its surface, which has been eaten into by mold. The unreachable, absence, and repetition are important motifs in Joanna Schulte’s art. For all of its deliberate nostalgia, the exhibition at Schloss Landestrost demonstrates that a return to yesterday is impossible. The mixture of simple everyday materials from a past day and age and the use of contemporary cultural practices such as sampling and remixing are characteristic of Joanna Schulte’s artistic approach of causing layers of time to collide. In her choice of material, she consistently pursues the motif of repetition. The various parts of the installation are time and again imbued with new life and, depending on the site, are arranged to produce completely different settings. To this end, Joanna Schulte uses objects and workpieces that are already part of the consumer cycle, therefore aiming for the sustainability of her art production. “

Schön, dass es schön war, Jennifer Bork, 2020

„Excerpt from the opening speech, Kunstverein Wolfenbüttel by Julika Bosch ...The expansive installation opens our view to the landscape, leading us into the fog. Fog is the first thing we encounter on the invitation card, and fog is an interesting natural phenomenon in itself: it closes and locks t…“

„Excerpt from the opening speech, Kunstverein Wolfenbüttel by Julika Bosch ...The expansive installation opens our view to the landscape, leading us into the fog. Fog is the first thing we encounter on the invitation card, and fog is an interesting natural phenomenon in itself: it closes and locks the view. “Taking away the view” already sounds poetic, like veiling something as a space of longing. For Joanna Schulte, it is a palindrome—read forwards, it is fog; read backwards, it is life. With this poetic play on words, the opposite of life also appears: fog as a dangerous space or in solitude. This is the case, for example, with Herman Hesse, who writes: “How strange to wander in the fog! / Every bush and stone is lonely, / No tree sees the other, / Each is alone.” (H.H. In the Fog, 1905) As this brief example of the foggy landscape suggests, landscape is also a projection screen for desires and fears, charged with memories and expectations. And: landscape is particularly suited to abstraction. This is surprising, as one might initially think that landscape and abstraction are not easily compatible. Nevertheless, we create landscape from diverse and heterogeneous impressions of constantly changing views. Just as there is no such thing as nature, there is no such thing as landscape; rather, landscape is an abstract concept that is only composed in our perception. It can be a river/city/forest landscape. We don't look at a blade of grass and call it landscape. Thus, we can say with the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel and the art historian Richard Hoppe-Sailer: “What we understand as landscape is already the result of a multi-layered, vivid process of abstraction.” (Seiler / Simmel) Joanna Schulte uses the boundary of the permeable membrane between the interior of the installation and the exterior of nature to make such intermediate spaces visible again. She transfers the landscape, which we take for granted, back into abstract space: a form running—that's a very nice title, but at the same time one wonders: What form? What does the form consist of? Just as the view through the fog is repeatedly obscured and revealed, we are guided through the exhibition space by wooden walkways as guides and wave movements. In between, the passageway is obstructed by fog. The 360-degree sound installation also refers to this: "turning to the right, winding to the left... falling downwards... This makes the movements clear to us, in which forms constantly come together and insights emerge – while hiking, as an experience of self and nature – in art as an act of abstraction. It is perfectly acceptable to stray from the path, as a counter-movement, to constantly seek a form on your own paths; even fog seeks its forms and has sculptural qualities. Those who wish to express their passion for hiking or art can document their presence with a stamp from the two stamp houses. The houses may be opened and used, as with the Harzer Wandernadel hiking badge. Parallel to the exhibition, a hike is planned for March 31, the route of which is based on the shape of the expired floor plans found here. Not only does the exhibition space come into its own as a space for action, in which our bodies are integrated into the events and repeatedly locate themselves in the space—the outdoor space is also included. In the exhibition, the relationship between the present, the made present, and the remembered is constantly shifting. There is the physical presence of nature—in wood, leaves, and branches; then there is the simulated nature of artificial fog and the image of nature in photography, as well as the sound that creates a ghostly presence flowing through the space. Joanna Schulte's whispering moves on so quickly that we rarely catch up with her, but she catches us again and again, like an echo in the forest. The sounds of the zither, guitar, and, of course, a traveling guitar also echo...... “

Coming up - going down, Julika Bosch, 2019

„Because What Is, Is Not All, 2016, Kunstverein Linz am Rhein, Stadthalle Text excerpt: The Longing of Things, Stephan Berg „…...The artist has now created a spatial installation for the Stadthalle in Linz am Rhein that at first glance seems to be minimalist, yet in terms of content it is filled wi…“

„Because What Is, Is Not All, 2016, Kunstverein Linz am Rhein, Stadthalle Text excerpt: The Longing of Things, Stephan Berg „…...The artist has now created a spatial installation for the Stadthalle in Linz am Rhein that at first glance seems to be minimalist, yet in terms of content it is filled with multifaceted resonance spaces and echoes. Its title, Weil das was ist nicht alles ist (Because What Is, Is Not All, 2016), which is freely adapted from Theodor Adorno, already makes reference to the longing to overcome the dichotomy between reality and artistic imagination, between fact and fiction, which runs through the work like a golden thread. That fact that the Stadthalle Linz was once a Capuchin abbey built in the seventeenth century and was not converted into an event venue until 1973 suits the artist, because the building itself underwent an act of transformation, which also constitutes the basis of all of Joanna Schulte’s works. This building is in itself a paragon of inauthenticity: outside, the Madonna above the portal conveys the impression of a church. However, inside it yields to the reality of a mundane multipurpose hall that now holds a stage framed by curtains where a history-laden Baroque alterpiece that was removed in the seventies once stood. Joanna Schulte developed a concept for this space—which was obviously not designed as an art space—that on the one hand activates the entire hall without false horror vacui, and on the other hand cleverly explores the two poles of the building between its formerly sacral and now secular purpose. The installative intervention comprises four components that are mutually dependent on and complement one another. The eighteen-meter-long hall is structured by two lanes of lamps from the seventies that lead up to the stage. They open up a kind of gangway, and every ten minutes they illuminate the path to the stage in pulsating alternation with the stage lighting. Corresponding with this, there is a monitor on the empty stage, which has been covered with a white rug, in front of the existing curtains. The monitor is situated at precisely the same place where the high altarpiece once stood. We see a film still of the interior of another church on the monitor. The artist is lying on the floor of the central nave and wearing a white wedding dress from the seventies; a phantasmal image of the high altarpiece from Linz has been inserted with the aid of Photoshop on the rear wall below the arch. The third element is an incessantly rotating disco ball on the gallery above the entrance, which is not accessible to visitors. It, too, is illuminated in turns with the work installed on the floor. Fourthly, the overall installation is supplemented by a complex sound collage that—also every ten minutes— contains, among other things, reduced organ tones, experimental noises, and excerpts from hits from the seventies. Everything in this work is determined by opening up a space of ambivalence, transformation, and a never completely redeemed expectation in which there is no longer any room for the unambiguity of either/or. The entire hall seems to be holding its breath indefinitely, because everything that takes place in it simultaneously includes its denial. The stage with the curtain closed behind the monitor is looking at us as if it is waiting for the performance, which in truth has already become reality in the shape of the monitor. And this monitor itself in turn actually does not contain anything more than a sacral void, namely the projection of the irretrievably lost altarpiece, as well as a (make- believe) bride who—lying on the floor of the nave—will presumably never reach this phantom altar. It is precisely this productive dis-illusion that visitors experience who are drawn to the monitor by the rows of lamps that lead up to the stage, only to realize that it is the stage itself that depicts the gap, which is actually meant to be closed by them. Looking back in the direction of the entrance and the gallery, they are confronted by a disco ball suspended at an unreachable height and revolving exclusively around itself—a metaphor for the secular sphere that at the same time denies any access and comes across as a cold, twinkling star whose self-reflexive rotation does not promise pleasure or at least loud party oblivion, but at best absence and deprivation. And yet this constellation is not an exercise in the Beckettian hopelessness of eternally waiting. On the whole, what develops here and in this work does not aim at futility, but lives on an expectation that never ceases. In this roundelay of permanent no-longer and not-yet, reality loses its purported incircumventability. Instead of yielding to the factum brutum of the “suchness” of things, Joanna Schulte has created a selection of images in which nothing is simply just given in actual fact but already always becomes different, new, and possible by calling it artistic as such. “

Weil das was ist nicht alles ist, Stephan Berg, Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2016

„" The Transfiguration of the Commonplace " In 1981, the American art critic Arthur C. Danto published an extensive philosophy of art with title The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. He borrowed the title from a novel by the author Muriel Spark in which one of its protagonists, Sister Helena, pub…“

„" The Transfiguration of the Commonplace " In 1981, the American art critic Arthur C. Danto published an extensive philosophy of art with title The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. He borrowed the title from a novel by the author Muriel Spark in which one of its protagonists, Sister Helena, publishes a novel by the same name. “Hers was a title,” Danto writes in his preface, “I admired and coveted, resolving to take it for my own should I ever write a book it might suit.” When he ultimately had use for it, he wrote a letter to Muriel Spark to learn what the content of this fictive book might have been, which was otherwise not mentioned in the novel. “She replied, to my delight,” Danto continues, “that it would have been about art, as she herself practiced it. The practice, I suppose, consisted in transforming commonplace young women into creatures of fiction, radiant in mystery … .” In many respects, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace seems to a suitable solution for the purpose of approaching Joanna Schulte’s art. Also since the practice described by Danto applies to her works—a practice that consists precisely in transforming a commonplace young woman into a creature of fiction, radiant in mystery. There is always an inherent autobiographical gesture in Joanna Schulte’s works, a personal entanglement that manifests, for example, in the fact that the artist places herself in the picture: as a wraithlike figure, as a self-staging, as someone to identify with. And even in those places in which she does not physically appear, her involvement with materials, objets trouvés, photography, film, and music is always an intimate act that has something to do with her own biography. The nature of the things in her art cosmos is filled with the past, and for this reason alone of a magical nature in the present. One does not have to know exactly where the things come from; one senses their value and their meaning. In Joanna Schulte’s exhibition Wir sind was wir waren (We Are What We Were) at the Hermannshof in Völksen, a curtain—inherited from her grandmother—plays a central role. Its floral pattern brings nature from exterior into interior space and determines the color palette that defines the exhibition hall: a deep blue, a mossy green, a complementary magenta. Like on a stage, it blocks one’s view of the space behind it, in which one suspects an indefinite source of music. Guitar chords, computer sounds, chimes, and the soft voice of the artist come out of nowhere. The song “Goodbye to Romance” clearly puts one in a melancholy mood. It evokes futility, impermanence, desire, and that romantic frame of mind that gives magic back to the mundane world, which for Joanna Schulte is always associated with the aura of the mysterious. Its visible sign is the curtain, the symbol of ambivalence. It is a material used for the purpose of hiding and disclosing, inviting and denying. It fans our curiosity, permits the staging, and as a “final curtain” becomes a metaphor for the boundary between life and death. Joanna Schulte pasted the words “Das Stück ist erst zu Ende, wenn der Vorhang fällt” (The play is not over until the curtain falls) in white capital letters on the neighboring white, sliding door. In a photograph from the series Das Haus am Bach (The House on the Stream), the curtain motif is again taken up in the blue of the opposite wall. The artist discovered an abandoned convalescent home in the Harz mountains whose walls are covered with moss and mold and whose formerly white curtains have a greenish shimmer. Nature is reclaiming its realm; here, nature and architecture are not antagonists. There is hardly anything more to say where the boundary runs between exterior and interior space. There is a dim intermediate realm to be discovered, strangely otherworldly between yesterday and today. There is also an inherent magic in this world, which is the result of a specific view. The poet Novalis described it: “When I give the commonplace a higher meaning, the customary a mysterious appearance, the known the dignity of the unknown, the finite the illusion of the infinite, I romanticize it.” The play with ambivalences and the dissolution of exterior and interior is further pursued on the second axis of the exhibition space. A small projector has been placed on one side in front of the park landscape of the Hermannshof that one sees through the large window front. The slide one sees in it is called “Rot und Wald” (Red and Forest) and shows a forest path between enshadowed fir trees. In the distance the clear horizon. Before it a thin snow line, tiny in the overwhelming landscape, the artist in a red dress. A camisole—as it would be called in the fairy tales by the brothers Grimm. Its counterpart on the other side: a sunlit forest path. Here, too, only a tiny point: the women in the red dress. Joanna Schulte projects this motif onto the wall of the roofed hall in exterior space. Beside it plays her music video Lueckenverzaeuner (Repairer of the Breach), a eulogy to spring. It is not until dusk falls that the projections become visible, and the landscape and its likeness, fact and fiction, interlock. Outer, communicable reality appears as an image of an inner reality, a kind of soulscape. Because this is what it is about: about the dissolution of the boundaries of perception. It is an attitude that fuses art and reality. It was for this reason that Arthur C. Danto found such pleasure in his title The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: because it was once fictive, and he turned it into a real title. The imaginary infiltrates and alters reality. An amazing transgression of boundaries. In doing so, the interaction between imagination and reality in Joanna Schulte’s art acts like a mirror that produces doubling, revenants, images. At the Hermannshof, the appeal of repetition becomes the manifest principle. She has meanwhile placed her eponymous installation Wir sind was war waren in the white tea pavilion, just a few steps away from the exhibition hall. A record is being played in an endless loop on an old Blaupunkt stereo that, like the floral curtain, used to belong to her grandmother. The lettering “Wir sind was wir waren” can be read on the floor. One could strike on the idea of interpreting the work as the reflection of the same old, boring daily grind, as the rhythm of pure routine. However, the artist subverts this reading with a disco ball. It rotates underneath the Blaupunkt stereo, its light reflexes making for fantastic effects. Here, repetition is celebrated as an act of retrieving, as a ritual of memory that secures the past its place in the present. In Joanna Schulte’s art, the endless loop becomes a motif of desire, an intimation of eternity. The light in which this commonplace world appears to us and that is capable of transfiguring us always hails from within ourselves. “

Die Verklärung des Gewöhnlichen, Kristina Tieke, 2016

„“Home sweet home” – embroidered with gold thread, a dustpan, a cleaning bucket, vacuum cleaner, and cleaning cupboard all appear to be covered in gold, along with a brocade mop: Joanna Schulte uses these wondrous objects to stage “home stories” of a special kind. She transfers unspectacular things f…“

„“Home sweet home” – embroidered with gold thread, a dustpan, a cleaning bucket, vacuum cleaner, and cleaning cupboard all appear to be covered in gold, along with a brocade mop: Joanna Schulte uses these wondrous objects to stage “home stories” of a special kind. She transfers unspectacular things from the domestic world of work, ordinary craft situations, and everyday activities into the context of art in a seductively beautiful way. In doing so, she situates her artistic work in the tension-filled field of art and everyday life, which is associated with the drawing and dissolving of boundaries. Normal everyday life refers to the repetitive and unspectacular aspects of daily life, the individually shaped routines and rules, personal systems of order and rituals. Life and work in the comfort of one's own home: this is a field of observation and action that is fraught with ambivalent ideas and feelings, and in which coziness and individual happiness at home are just as much at home as the longing for change and escape. “It becomes clear,” writes Stefan Rasche in a catalog essay on the subject of “home stories,” "that living, accompanied by the separation of the inner and outer worlds that is constitutive of bourgeois society, is an extremely conservative affair because it is based on decoratively solidified structures and rituals. Private space is a highly retarded zone in which, at best, functional areas such as the kitchen and bathroom keep pace with the speed of other, external innovations." Using art to engage with everyday life means turning artistic work into an instrument of observation and analysis and steering our familiar view of what we call everyday reality in a new direction. By transforming everyday objects and actions into an artistic context, sometimes in miniaturized model situations, Joanna Schulte shifts the familiar and self-evident aspects of our daily environment to a different level of perception and meaning. In this context, the polarity of reality and fiction, interior and exterior space, subject and object, for example, is questioned or redefined. “Based on a personal approach, I try to achieve a sense of irritation, a shift in the conventional perspective, the manipulation of the gaze, to discuss the truth of images, and to contrast my own imagination with the dream factories and fairy tales of everyday life.” (Joanna Schulte) To this end, the artist offers things, especially the most banal and least noticed cleaning utensils and daily cleaning activities, a stage of special attention. We feel as if we are entering a fairy-tale world reminiscent of Cinderella's transformation and entry into the world of princes and princesses. Once again, it is the white bird that throws down a magnificent dress and slippers embroidered with silk and silver to Cinderella so that she can go to the ball in luxurious attire. Who hasn't longed for this or even felt like Cinderella? Dreams come true. All doors to beauty and wealth are open. Collective images and feelings are activated in this way. A red walkway is built into the architecture of the vaulted cellar at the Kunstverein Viernheim, on which the viewer, following the sound of an experimental piece of music, arrives at a large projection. Standing above the floor on a VIP red catwalk, they experience themselves and their own perception as something unique. Embedded in a constantly repeating, catchy soundscape of various noises and a simply composed piece of music, they immerse themselves in the visual world of the film, which is played on a loop, and lose themselves in the fabric of the ever-repeating visual and acoustic events. The film is about manual labor and housework: the artist quickly scurries through the apartment with her red mop. Cleaning utensils appear as silhouettes. Almost abstract, cheerfully colorful images flow lightly and carefree, suggesting movement and activity. The synaesthetic perception of the rhythmic repetition of image and sound causes the viewer's thoughts to revolve around the value and apparent futility of small, everyday household chores. At first, the viewer surrenders to the gradually familiarizing cosmos of images and sounds, calmed by its rhythmic uniformity. They allow themselves to be dazzled and enchanted, feeling a sense of stability and security in a self-created domestic world in which the organization of things and daily activities follow a self-determined, fixed rhythm. But then the mood shifts. The manipulation is noticed. Disturbing realizations bring them back to reality. They become aware that ideas of a “cosy home” and an “ideal world” within their own four walls are just as fictional as the existence of security and permanence. It is as if the household utensils were holding up a mirror to him. With great pomp and glamour, they leave everyday life behind and take a trip into the world of the rich and beautiful. Knitted, sewn, or gilded, they undergo a refinement that amazes and inspires admiration. These seemingly precious objects immerse themselves in a parallel world of experience and become mysterious apparitions that inspire storytelling, for example, about how everyday life can be wonderfully enchanted in one's own imagination. Glamour in everyday life – the appearance of cleaning objects “The functional object has no essence,” writes Jean Baudrillard. “It is rich in functionality but poor in significance, limited to the necessary and exhausted in everyday life.” Joanna Schulte now makes the unbelievable come true by using aestheticization and dynamization (in the video films) to push the practical usability of functional objects into the background. The objects become autonomous sculptural formations that play their part in the absurd theater of life with relish, humor, and verve. Dressed in magnificent brocade and gold, they are transformed into objects of aesthetic contemplation. In this way, it is possible to view the everyday world from an aesthetic distance as a spectacle or a (tragic) comedy (see Arthur Danto, “The Transfiguration of Things”). This is also the case, for example, in a miniature projection housed in a gilded and knitted plaster cabinet. The central location of the action is two dollhouse rooms. Among other things, we see a pile of dirt that has a life of its own and repeatedly reclaims the swept room. A love of order is considered a bourgeois virtue. Consequently, there are numerous sayings: those who keep things tidy are just too lazy to look for things; tidiness helps with housekeeping; tidiness is half the battle, because tidiness, I might add, needs chaos in order to develop self-perpetuating strategies and systems. So there is a fundamental paradox in that every order must allow disorder in order to assert itself. Colloquially, one would say it is a vicious circle in which we move day in and day out. One could also speak of the tragedy of Sisyphus, who must begin his fruitless work over and over again. Just as Sisyphus has become a symbol of laborious, monotonous work, the epitome of being trapped in a never-ending cycle, Joanna Schulte's staging of domestic tidiness points to the traditional obsession of the housewife/househusband: everything has its place and cleanliness and order reign supreme – everywhere. Day after day. In the model-like, provisional room worlds, the everyday tragedy of eternal repetition and destruction, and thus the hopeless struggle against dirt and disorder, plays out in an ironically exaggerated manner. And the record keeps spinning. In her 2009 column clock object, when the lid is opened, the gilded miniature plaster objects begin to turn, a song plays, and lights shine. It is a total work of art for the eye and ear, a sensual experience. And the technology works perfectly. Functionality and perfection on the one hand, on the other hand, the senseless activity of the small plaster objects can be observed: they circle and circle, keeping themselves in motion, as if they were on a flight (or escape) path with no real destination. They seem to me like human representatives, just as Jean Baudrillard describes in his book “The System of Things”: “In front of the functional object, man proves to be dysfunctional, irrational, and subjective, an empty form and therefore accessible to functional myths and fantastic plans.” (Baudrillard, p. 75) When everything is functional, there are no secrets and no mysteries. When everything is organized and therefore controlled, everything is transparent and without surprise. Harald Szeemann, the most important art curator of the second half of the 20th century, therefore saw “disorder as a source of hope.” In Joanna Schulte's cosmos of images and sounds, the “freedom for dreamlike, creative mental work,” as she herself puts it, is used to express, within the framework of multimedia spatial installations, the desire for a world that allows entropy, that is unusual, mysterious, and constantly surprising, that is multi-layered, versatile, and cheerful, opening up new perspectives. That is why she allows ordinary things to transcend themselves, charging them with magic and giving them cult status. Despite their concrete objectivity, things embody a high degree of abstraction and are thus capable of setting our thoughts in motion. They act as countermeasures or supplements to rigidity and fixedness, regulation and order, functionality and perfection: destabilizing the familiar by changing scale through miniaturization and shifting perspectives through humor, irony, playing with fact and fiction, wonder, and dreams. Thinking and perceiving differently—perhaps this is the way to see further or think further, for example, about the seductive power of images, about creative freedom, and dream factories. “Bringing order to chaos” and “bringing chaos to order,” as Adorno put it, are not only everyday processes but also artistic ones in the endeavor to grasp the world and one's own life. In this context, Joanna Schulte's golden, interconnecting installations can be understood as experimental arrangements that give our ideas of order and disorder, functionality and playful freedom a special appearance and thus attract attention—ironically ambiguous, seductively tongue-in-cheek, humanly emotional, well aware of the possibility of an uncertain outcome. “

Von der Wiederkehr der Unordnung oder Repeat of Ordinary, Heiderose Langer, Kunststiftung Erich Hauser, 2009