Dreams of an Owl, Who the Bær and the Wounded Planet

A small bronze owl and “Who the Bær”: together with these two figures, we encounter the Kunsthalle Bielefeld collection in a different way and rediscover it in sometimes quite unusual combinations. The bronze owl entitled “Owl’s Dream” (Songe de hibou) was created in 1937/38 by the Franco-German artist Hans (Jean) Arp (1886 -1966). “Who the Bær” is an artistic figure created by the British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara (*1982 in London, lives and works in Berlin), who manifests himself in drawings, paintings, films and sculptures.

We live on a “wounded planet”. For the first time in human history, our actions are reflected in the planetary system. Faced with the climate crisis, we all need to change our perspective. What contribution can a museum make? Which works and which new constellations can inspire us to change our thinking and our relationship to the world? Which works or themes in the Kunsthalle Bielefeld collection take on a new significance against the backdrop of the climate crisis in the age of the “Anthropocene”? We regard the Kunsthalle’s collection, which has grown to over 5,000 works through acquisitions and donations since 1928, as our artistic memory. The sculpture “Owl Dream” by Hans (Jean) Arp has been on permanent loan from the Staff Foundation, Lemgo, since 2010. With his view that artistic and natural processes are of equal value and that man and his actions are always in relation to nature and by no means superior, Arp anticipated central aspects of the way we think today.

A total of 200 works by around 150 international artists will be on display. In addition to old acquaintances from our collection, we are also showing works that have rarely been exhibited before. We also present donations and acquisitions from recent years. Individual loans (by Hans Arp, Julia Scher and Charline von Heyl) complement the show.

This time, the works, which range from the 19th century to the present day, are not arranged according to classic categories such as style, period or motifs such as “landscape”, “interior” or “portrait”. In our work on the “wounded planet”, we have used terms that represent important models and provide orientation in the discussions on our current social natural conditions (“Anthropocene”). A special exhibition architecture was developed for this purpose.

While the sculpture “Owl Dream” by Hans (Jean) Arp provides an impetus to explore our relationship to the world, “Who the Bær”, the art figure that Simon Fujiwara has been continuously developing since 2020, touches on current socio-political questions about our own orientation in the world. The figure appears to have no gender, sexuality or nationality. At the same time, it unites the contradictions and disunity that accompany us today in the distorted image of a globalized world driven by social media. What is my identity based on? How do I stand in and towards the world? What can art achieve?

The exhibition is intended as an experimental arrangement in which the Kunsthalle’s collection is reorganized according to possible “dreams of an owl”. It begins with the dream as such, with further areas marked by terms such as “biosphere”, “technosphere”, “fiction”, “situatedness” and “sociosphere”. The development of the terms according to categories from the theories of the Anthropocene was developed together with Prof. Dr. Timo Skrandies (Institute of Art History at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf). The exhibition project and its digital extension KB Kosmos will be supervised and developed by him and his students during the preparation and duration of the project.

Also in conjunction with this exhibition, the Round Table was founded. This is an initiative in order to include the diversity of voices in our society in the museum’s work. Ambassadors come together who represent a diverse urban society and regularly engage in open discussions with representatives of the Kunsthalle.