{"id":15015,"date":"2026-10-19T10:57:04","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T08:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/?post_type=journal&p=15015"},"modified":"2026-10-19T12:25:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T10:25:30","slug":"yana-wernicke-from-quarry-to-art-gallery-the-red-main-sandstone-2","status":"publish","type":"journal","link":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/entdecken\/kb-journal\/yana-wernicke-from-quarry-to-art-gallery-the-red-main-sandstone-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mathilda Abker: Shared Views \u2013 How Visitors Interpret Artworks Without Context"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":15024,"template":"","format":"standard","journal-categories":[59],"class_list":["post-15015","journal","type-journal","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","journal-categories-essay"],"acf":{"blocks_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"bild_single","bild":15024},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_sans_klein","text":"This article was produced as part of a collaboration between Heinrich Heine University D\u00fcsseldorf (HHU) and the Kunsthalle Bielefeld for the exhibition \u201cGeteilte Ansichten.\u201d The surveys and their analysis were conducted as part of a student outreach project.\n\nAbout the Project: Over the course of a semester, students engaged with works from the exhibition and developed projects that explored the works through art or research; others came up with ideas for social media, while still others considered how the exhibition could be presented on-site at the museum."},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_serif_normal","text":"\u201cThe best thing about art is this: You have a picture, and you can have a thousand different perspectives\u2014divided perspectives.\u201d<\/em>\n\nWith this sentence, a visitor sums up the essence of the current exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld. The exhibition *Shared Perspectives*, created in collaboration with the KiCo Collection, is dedicated to the diverse forms of collaboration, separation, and joint creation. Within this overarching concept, a specific room focuses on the theme of shared work, where Karin Sander\u2019s \u201cMailed Paintings\u201d meet Tom\u00e1s Saraceno\u2019s delicate spiderweb-like installations.\n\nThe room features two works by Karin Sander on one wall and two large paintings by Tomas Saraceno on the opposite wall. Another work by Saraceno, housed in a Plexiglas cube, floats near the entrance to the room. To explore how this curatorial approach reveals itself without pre-established explanations, all wall labels were covered up as part of an educational experiment. Visitors were thus guided from an unbiased first encounter through to the unveiling of the wall texts. Through the viewers\u2019 various viewpoints, a spectrum of different perspectives is revealed.\n\nA first, unbiased look compels visitors to engage visually and through association. Details such as the DHL tape on one of Sanders\u2019 works provide food for thought:\n\n\"It reminded me a little bit of a package. [...] You can send gifts and order things.\"\n\"And a DHL package. That's obvious.\"<\/em>\n\nAt the same time, the black packing tape on the \u201cMailed Paintings\u201d is also recognized as a motif of separation; terms such as \u201cwindow,\u201d \u201ccut,\u201d and \u201cpartial surface\u201d are mentioned:\n\"For me, that's a shared plane. It can mean different things to me. It can be time, it can be space, or it can be people who are shared.\"<\/em>\n\nThe surface of Sanders\u2019 works speaks for itself. Through their rough texture and signs of wear, the audience interprets her images as objects that \u201ctell of something that has undergone a division.\u201d These signs of wear also evoke the concepts of movement and interconnectedness:\n\"A symbol of movement and travel from one place to another.\"<\/em>\n\nIn the same way, the shape of the canvas also guides our associations:\n\u201cA wheel as a symbol of actual movement, of transportation, of moving something<\/em>,\u201d<\/em> remarks a visitor standing in front of one of Sanders\u2019 circular works.\n\nThese reactions make it clear which specific details\u2014from shape and texture to the packing tape\u2014guide our perception and shape our interpretation. Although the audience had already been able to form associations related to transport, separation, and movement, the true essence of the curatorial concept remained hidden at this point.\n\nLooking at Tom\u00e1s Saraceno\u2019s works opens up entirely different realms of association:\n\"There's something organic about it. Cells, spores, something like that.\"\n\"A fine hairline crack in the glass or in the ice.\"\n\"I was thinking more along the lines of there being a kind of divide, but one you can hardly sense [...] like a very, very small crack.\"\n\u201cIt\u2019s very complex; it\u2019s made up of very small parts. No two shapes are exactly alike.\u201d<\/em>\n\nIt\u2019s rare for visitors to immediately recognize that these are spiderwebs upon first glance. Nevertheless, there are interpretations such as \u201ceverything is somehow interwoven\u201d<\/em> or even very specific descriptions like \u201cwebs made by a spider I\u2019d really rather not encounter.\u201d<\/em>\n\nThe range of different approaches remains fascinating: Some describe purely the formal language, while others make free associations or observe the spatial relationships between the structures:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s very fragile, somehow [...] there\u2019s an effort to come together. It\u2019s sort of together, but somehow still divided.\u201d<\/em>\n\nBoth Sanders\u2019 and Saraceno\u2019s works reveal a genuine sense of being overwhelmed by the task of interpreting this conceptual art entirely without context. One visitor admits with a smile:\n\"I still have a huge question mark in my head.\"<\/em>\n\nAs the titles are gradually revealed, most visitors\u2019 uncertainty gives way to enthusiasm. Saraceno has real spiders\u2014some of different species\u2014weave one after another in the same room. Sander, on the other hand, primes canvases white and sends them unprotected by mail from one exhibition venue to another, with the respective title ultimately emerging from the various locations. The signs of wear and tear from the logistics chains shape the work.\n\nThis revelation fundamentally shifts the perspective. The focus is no longer solely on the artist\u2019s own signature style, but rather on the process of sharing. The respondents\u2019 reactions reflect precisely this insight into the role of postal routes and animal participants:\n\u201cIt all fits together perfectly: on the one hand, the mail and the transport route managed by human hands; on the other, the spider\u2019s web as a natural transport system in space.\u201d<\/em>\n\nThe term \u201cinterconnection\u201d came up frequently in the discussions, as it describes, on the one hand, the interconnections within supply chains, but can also be applied to the actual interconnections in Saraceno\u2019s works. In Sander\u2019s work, interconnection takes place hidden in the background, whereas in Saraceno\u2019s work, it constitutes the very essence of his art:\n\u201cIt really shows just how interconnected we all are: people, supply chains, but also animals and nature. It\u2019s like a web that spans everything.\u201d<\/em>\n\nThe discussions also touched on the concept of authorship and its applicability to everyday life:\n\u201cThe fascinating thing is that the artist completely relinquishes control. The work comes about through chance, through the process of transport, or through whatever the spider happens to be doing at that moment.\u201d\n\"It makes you think about how many people or stakeholders are involved in the things we see every day without giving it a second thought.\"\n\"It's kind of like that in a family, too. Everyone gets assigned tasks [...]. Sometimes we get annoyed because we have to take out the trash... And that's how the whole big picture comes together.\"<\/em>\n\nIn numerous responses, the gradual unveiling was automatically followed by a personal assessment of the mediation experiment and its impact on one\u2019s own perception:\n\u201cThe fact that nature or circumstances are given so much room to help shape the work\u2014I would never have seen that in it without the text.\u201d\n\"To be honest, without the sign, I was lost. But now it really clicks.\"\n\"It's like a little rush of happiness when you finally understand it.\"<\/em>\n\nIt becomes clear that being provided with contextual information does not mean that one\u2019s own observation becomes worthless. The wall text does not replace personal discovery; rather, it simply lays out another trail. It provides a starting point without closing off the space for free thought. Ultimately, we come to realize that engaging with art is always a dialogue\u2014between one\u2019s own associations, the artists\u2019 ideas, the ways these are realized in an exhibition concept, and the many perspectives in between. It is, in short, a space for a thousand possibilities and shared perspectives.\n\nMathilda Abker"}],"gallerie":[{"bild":15022,"laufweite":84},{"bild":15020,"laufweite":100},{"bild":15024,"laufweite":50}],"subtitle":"Partnership with Heinrich Heine University D\u00fcsseldorf in 2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/journal\/15015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/journal"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/journal"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"journal-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/journal-categories?post=15015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}