From April 23, 2023 - With Schiller's thesis on the element of play in culture in mind, we were once again providing insights into the "Reinking Collection".
In all cultures, the constraints of nature and the violence of instincts are civilized through devotion to the selfless and a sense of the superfluous in play. Culture is above all the embodiment of freedom.
A story of postmodern and contemporary art was told from the spirit of the game. "Themed rooms" dealt with social and cosmic conditions and connections like a laboratory: the search for identity and gender, playing with time and space, body and nature.

The exhibition showed the "homo ludens", the playing people, in a double interpretation: In the definition of a researching artistry, which deals with its own reality in experimental arrangements and considerations, defines its visual language and thus finds a personal artistic vocabulary. As well as in the collector's creative play with the selected objects. The collector "paints" himself, as Duchamp so aptly put it, "his own collection". By selecting, combining and arranging, he becomes the “artist squared”. (Marcel Duchamp)

The Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga underscores Schiller's reflections on aesthetics in his major work Homo Ludens: On the Origin of Culture in Play, 1938.
The play of art encourages man to play with all his powers through reason, feeling, imagination, memory and expectation. By saying “The modern apparatus of publicity, with literary exaggerated art criticism, with exhibitions and lectures, Huizinga is suitable for increasing the playful character of art expressions”, Huizinga also anticipates what is happening in today’s art world with all its degeneration.
Away from the effective world of the "modern art apparatus", the Reinking Collection primarily aims at a very human self-disclosure of the world.
Sometimes with a wink, sometimes with deep seriousness, we show more than 80 international artist positions in a dialogue that spans cultures and generations. Visitors are invited to explore the facets of the world by looking at the works and their mutual relationships, and to learn more about themselves in the process.

Works by the following artists were exhibited:
Carl Andre, Hermine Anthoine, Miroslav Balka, John Baldessari, Lothar Baumgarten, Rolf Bergmeier, Joseph Beuys, Guillaume Bijl, John Bock, Baldur Burwitz, Michael Buthe, Chapman Brothers, Maurizio Cattelan, Martin Creed, Max Cole, Hanne Darboven, Samy Deluxe, Madeleine Dietz, Henrik Eiben, Johannes Esper, Brendan Fowler, Tom Früchtl, Hamish Fulton, Os Gemeos, Markus Genesius | WOW 123, Liam Gillick, Gregory Green, Katharina Grosse, Hans Haacke, Georg Herold, Horst Hellinger, Edgar Hofschen, General Idea, Christian Jankowski, Folkert DeJong, Seljia Kameric, Jon Kessler, Mike Kelley, Suchan Kinoshita, Edward und Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Franticek Klossner, Terence Koh, Magda Krawcewicz, Alicia Kwade, Peter Land, Rachel Lachowicz, Wolfgang Laib, Sherrie Levine, Maria Marshall,Thom Merrick, Jonathan Meese, Olaf Metzel, Jill Miller, Piotr Nathan, Bruce Nauman, Ernesto Neto, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Damian Ortega, C.O.Paeffgen, Markus Paetz, Guiseppe Penone, Dan Peterman, Wolfgang Petrick, Merlin Reichart, Klaus Rinke, Ugo Rondinone, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Sam Samore, Roman Signer, Michael Schmeichel, Werner Schreib, Patrick Sellmann, Santiago Sierra, Andreas Slominski, Haim Steinbach, Toshiya Kobayashi, Dimitris Tzamouranis, Rikuo Ueda, Vitché, Nicole Wermers, Erwin Wurm, Iskender Yediler.

For the first time we were showing a second exhibition simultaneously in the exhibition hall.

TIMES was showing works by Vanessa Beecroft, Dimitris Tzamouranis and Thomas Judisch.

At the center of this exhibition was the video work “VB48” by Vanessa Beecroft.

On July 3, 2001, shortly before the G8 conference in Genoa, the Italian-British artist Vanessa Beecroft staged African migrant women in the hall of the Palazzo Ducale in the manner of a tableau vivant. Her Caravaggio-esque work plays on the contrast of power embodied by the city‘s palaces and the vulnerability of the African migrants who stand lost outside its walls.

The video work was flanked by paintings by the Greek artist Dimitris Tzamouranis. The concept underlying the paintings is based on the use of a rhetorical figure. In these paintings, Tzamouranis works with the figure of reversal. He shows something in them that he basically doesn‘t show at all.
His seascapes denote very precise places, identified by the geographic coordinates of the titles. In the past, refugees trying to reach Europe illegally sank and died there with their ships. They wanted to reach Greece or Italy from North Africa via various routes. The artist sailed his boat from Kalamata in Greece, his native town, following these escape routes. To where the tragedies happened. Dimitris Tzamouranis has entered the scene of the accident on a nautical chart that he created, which accompanies his “Mare Nostrum” pictures. Basically, this turns his works into memorabilia. With the help of painted allegories, they keep the memory of the catastrophes alive. Absence and presence, the dead and the sea, are dialectically related to each other.
Unlike in so many seascapes of the past, the sea does not appear here as a sublime natural wonder that the viewer should celebrate and marvel at with devotion, but rather as a kind of roaring monster*.

A wall of sleeping bags was positioned next to these works in the middle of the room. A closer look reveals that the cases are filled with newspaper. Stuffed to the brim with daily reports of political events from all over the world. So no real sleeping bags after all, just the romantic image of a travel group or even the sad reality of those who are fleeing and looking for protection?

The sculpture „Tausend und eine Nacht“ by the Dresden sculptor Thomas Judisch invites you to use it. Provides support and helps to connect with the works.

Vanessa Beecroft | Courtesy Sammlung Reinking

Dimitris Tzamouranis | Courtesy Sammlung Reinking / Galerie Michael Haas

Thomas Judisch | Courtesy the Artist

*from: Journey of Life. On the "Mare Nostrum" pictures by Dimitris Tzamouranis, Michael Stoeber, 2017.